Most fervently she protested she would. She had no difficulty in recollecting, in distinguishing her own; and at first she marked truly, and was glad to separate what was at worst only foolish girlish nonsense from things which had been interpolated to make out the romance; things which never could have come from her mind.
There is some comfort in having our own faults overshadowed, outdone by the greater faults of others. And here it was flagrant wickedness in the editor, and only weakness and imprudence in the writer of the real letters. Lady Cecilia continually solaced her conscience by pointing out to Helen, as she went on, the folly, literally the folly, of the deception she had practised on her husband; and her exclamations against herself were so vehement that Helen would not add to her pain by a single reproach, since she had decided that the time was past for urging her confession to the general. She now only said, “Look to the future, Cecilia, the past we cannot recall. This will be a lesson you can never forget.”
“Oh, never, never can I forget it. You have saved me, Helen.”
Tears and protestations followed these words, and at the moment they were all sincere; and yet, can it be believed? even in this last trial, when it came to this last proof, Lady Cecilia was not perfectly true. She purposely avoided putting her mark of acknowledgment to any of those expressions which most clearly proved her love for Colonel D’Aubigny; for she still said to herself that the time might come, though at present it could not be, when she might make a confession to her husband,—in his joy at the birth of a son, she thought she might venture; she still looked forward to doing justice to her friend at some future period, and to make this easier—to make this possible—as she said to herself, she must now leave out certain expressions, which might, if acknowledged, remain for ever fixed in Clarendon’s mind, and for which she could never be forgiven.
Helen, when she looked over the pages, observed among the unmarked passages some of those expressions which she had thought were Cecilia’s, but she concluded she was mistaken: she could not believe that her friend could at such a moment deceive her, and she was even ashamed of having doubted her sincerity; and her words, look, and manner, now gave assurance of perfect unquestioning confidence.
This delicacy in Helen struck Lady Cecilia to the quick. Ever apt to be more touched by her refined feelings than by any strong appeal to her reason or her principles, she was now shocked by the contrast between her own paltering meanness and her friend’s confiding generosity. As this thought crossed her mind, she stretched out her hand again for the book, took up the pencil, and was going to mark the truth; but, the impulse past, cowardice prevailed, and cowardice whispered, “Helen is looking at me, Helen sees at this moment what I am doing, and, after having marked them as not mine, how can I now acknowledge them?—it is too late—it is impossible.”
“I have done as you desired,” continued she, “Helen, to the best of my ability. I have marked all this, but what can it signify now my dear, except—?”
Helen interrupted her. “Take the book to the general this moment, will you, and tell him that all the passages are marked as he desired; stay, I had better write.”
She wrote upon a slip of paper a message to the same effect, having well considered the words by which she might, without further step in deception, save her friend, and take upon herself the whole blame—the whole hazardous responsibility.
When Cecilia gave the marked book to General Clarendon, he said, as he took it, “I am glad she has done this, though it is unnecessary now, as I was going to tell her if she had not fainted: unnecessary, because I have now in my possession the actual copies of the original letters; I found them here on my return. That good little poetess found them for me at the printer’s—but she could not discover—I have not yet been able to trace where they came from, or by whom they were copied.”