“Speak,” cried she, “I hear.”
“Hear then the words of a friend, who will be true to you through life—through life and death, if you will be but true to yourself, Helen Stanley—a friend who loves you as he loves Beauclerc; but he must do more, he must esteem you as he esteems Beauclerc, incapable of any thing that is false.”
Helen listened with her breath suspended, not a word in reply.
“Then I ask——” She put her hand upon his arm, as if to stop him; she had a foreboding that he was going to ask something that she could not, without betraying Cecilia, answer.
“If you are not yet sufficiently collected, I will wait; take your own time—My question is simple—I ask you to tell me whether all these letters are your’s or not?”
“No,” cried Helen, “these letters are not mine.”
“Not all,” said the general: “this first one I know to be yours, because I saw it in your handwriting; but I am certain all cannot be yours: now will you show me which are and which are not.”
“I will take them to my own room, and consider and examine.”
“Why not look at them here, Miss Stanley?”
She wanted to see Cecilia, she knew she could never answer the question without consulting her, but that she could not say; still she had no other resource, so, conquering her trembling, she rose and said, “I would rather go to——”