“O let me see them,” cried Lady Cecilia.
“Not yet, my love,” said he; “you would know nothing more by seeing them; they are in a feigned hand evidently.”
“But,” interrupted Cecilia, “you cannot want the book now, when you have the letters themselves;” and she attempted to draw it from his hand, for she instantly perceived the danger of the discrepancies between her marks and the letters being detected. She made a stronger effort to withdraw the book but he held it fast. “Leave it with me now, my dear; I want it; it will settle my opinion as to Helen’s truth.”
Slowly, and absolutely sickened with apprehension, Lady Cecilia withdrew. When she returned to Helen, and found how pale she was and how exhausted she seemed, she entreated her to lie down again and try to rest.
“Yes, I believe I had better rest before I see Granville,” said Helen: “where can he have been all day?”
“With some friend of his, I suppose,” said Cecilia, and she insisted on Helen’s saying no more, and keeping herself perfectly quiet. She farther suggested that she had better not appear at dinner.
“It will be only a family party, some of the general’s relations. Miss Clarendon is to be here, and she is one, you know, trying to the spirits; and she is not likely to be in her most suave humour this evening, as she has been under a course of the tooth-ache, and has been all day at the dentist’s.”
Helen readily consented to remain in her own room, though she had not so great a dread of Miss Clarendon as Lady Cecilia seemed to feel. Lady Cecilia was indeed in the greatest terror lest Miss Clarendon should have heard some of these reports about Helen and Beauclerc, and would in her blunt way ask directly what they meant, and go on with some of her point-blank questions, which Cecilia feared might be found unanswerable. However, as Miss Clarendon had only just come to town from Wales, and come only about her teeth, she hoped that no reports could have reached her; and Cecilia trusted much to her own address and presence of mind in moments of danger, in turning the conversation the way it should go.
But things were now come to a point where none of the little skilful interruptions or lucky hits, by which she had so frequently profited, could avail her farther than to delay what must be. Passion and character pursue their course unalterably, unimpeded by small external circumstances; interrupted they may be in their progress, but as the stream opposed bears against the obstacle, sweeps it away, or foams and passes by.
Before Lady Cecilia’s toilette was finished her husband was in her dressing-room; came in without knocking,—a circumstance so unusual with him, that Mademoiselle Felicie’s eyes opened to their utmost orbit, and, without waiting for word or look, she vanished, leaving the bracelet half clasped on her lady’s arm.