“So I apprehend,” said the general.
“I may be of too easy faith,” replied Beauclerc.—[No reply.] “This is a point of honour.”—[No denial.] “My dear general, if there be anything which weighs with you, and which you know and I do not, I think, as my friend and my guardian, you ought to tell it to me.”
“Pardon me,” said the general, turning away from Beauclerc as he spoke, and striking first one heel of his boot against the scraper at the hall-door, then the other—“pardon me, Granville, I cannot admit you to be a better judge than I am myself of what I ought to do or not to do.”
The tone was dry and proud, but Beauclerc’s provoked imagination conceived it to be also mysterious; the scales of his mind vibrated again, but he had said he would trust—trust entirely, and he would: yet he could not succeed in banishing all doubt, till an idea started into his head—“That writing was Lady Cecilia’s! I thought so at the first moment, and I let it go again. It is hers, and Helen is keeping her secret:—but could Lady Cecilia be so ungenerous—so treacherous?” However, he had declared he would ask no questions; he was a man of honour, and he would ask none—none even of himself—a resolution which he found it surprisingly easy to keep when the doubt concerned only Lady Cecilia. Whenever the thought crossed his mind, he said to himself, “I will ask nothing—suspect nobody; but if it is Lady Cecilia’s affair, it is all the more generous in Helen.” And so, secure in this explanation, though he never allowed to himself that he admitted it, his trust in Helen was easy and complete, and his passion for her increased every hour.
But Lady Cecilia was disturbed even by the perfect confidence and happiness of Beauclerc’s manner towards Helen. She could not but fear that he had guessed the truth; and it seemed as if everything which happened tended to confirm him in his suspicions; for, whenever the mind is strongly interested on any subject, something alluding to it seems wonderfully, yet accidentally, to occur in everything that we read, or hear in common conversation, and so it now happened; things were continually said by persons wholly unconcerned, which seemed to bear upon her secret. Lady Cecilia frequently felt this with pangs of confusion, shame, and remorse; and, though Beauclerc did not watch, or play the spy upon her countenance, he could not help sometimes observing the flitting colour—the guilty changes of countenance—the assumed composure: that mind, once so artless, began to be degraded—her spirits sank; she felt that she “had lost the sunshine of a soul without a mystery!”
The day fixed for the marriage approached; Lady Cecilia had undertaken the superintendence of the trousseau, and Felicie was in anxious expectation of its arrival. Helen had written to the Collingwoods to announce the intended event, asking for the good bishop’s sanction, as her guardian, and regretting that he could not perform the ceremony. She had received from Lady Davenant a few lines, written just before she sailed, warm with all the enthusiasm of her ardent heart, and full of expectation that Helen’s lot would be one of the happiest this world could afford. All seemed indeed to smile upon her prospects, and the only clouds which dimmed the sunshine were Cecilia’s insincerity, and her feeling that the general thought her acting unhandsomely and unwisely towards his ward; but she consoled herself with the thought that he could not judge of what he did not know, that she did not deserve his displeasure, that Granville was satisfied, and if he was, why should not General Clarendon be so too? Much more serious, however, was the pain she felt on Cecilia’s account. She reproached herself with betraying the trust Lady Davenant had reposed in her. That dreadful prophecy seemed now accomplishing: Cecilia’s natural generosity, that for which Helen had ever most loved and admired her, the brightest, fairest parts of her character, seemed failing now; what could be more selfish than Cecilia’s present conduct towards herself, more treacherous to her noble minded, her confiding husband! The openness, the perfect unreserve between the two friends, was no longer what it had been. Helen, however, felt the constraint between them the less as she was almost constantly with Beauclerc, and in her young happiness she hoped all would be right. Cecilia would tell the general, and they would be as intimate, as affectionate, as they had ever been.
One morning General Clarendon, stopping Cecilia as she was coming down to breakfast, announced that he was obliged to set off instantly for London, on business which could not be delayed, and that she must settle with Miss Stanley whether they would accompany him or remain at Clarendon Park. He did not know, he said, how long he might be detained.
Cecilia was astonished, and excessively curious; she tried her utmost address to discover what was the nature of his business, in vain. All that remained was to do as he required without more words. He left the room, and Cecilia decided at once that they had better accompany him. She dreaded some delay; she thought that, if the general went alone to town, he might be detained Heaven knows how long; and though the marriage must be postponed at all events, yet if they went with the general, the ceremony might be performed in town as well as at Clarendon Park; and she with some difficulty convinced Helen of this. Beauclerc feared nothing but delay. They were to go. Lady Cecilia announced their decision to the general, who immediately set off, and the others in a few hours followed him.