“Cecilia!” said the general.
He spoke in so stern a tone that she trembled from head to foot; her last falsehood about the letters—all her falsehoods, all her concealments, were, she thought, discovered; unable to support herself, she sank into his arms. He seated her, and went on in a cool, inexorable tone, “Cecilia, I am determined not to sanction by any token of my public approbation this marriage, which I no longer in my private conscience desire or approve; I will not be the person to give Miss Stanley to my ward.”
Lady Cecilia almost screamed: her selfish fears forgotten, she felt only terror for her friend. She exclaimed, “Clarendon, will you break off the marriage? Oh! Helen, what will become of her! Clarendon, what can you mean?”
“I mean that I have compared the passages that Helen marked in the book, with those copies of the letters which were given to the bookseller before the interpolations were made—the letters as Miss Stanley wrote them. The passages in the letters and the passages marked in the book do not agree.”
“Oh, but she might have forgotten, it might be accident,” cried Cecilia, overwhelmed with confusion.
“No, Cecilia,” pursued the General, in a tone which made her heart die within her—“no, Cecilia, it is not accident, it is design. I perceive that every strong expression, every word, in short, which could show her attachment to that man, has been purposely marked as not her own, and the letters themselves prove that they were her own. The truth is not in her.”
In an agitation, which prevented all power of thought, Cecilia exclaimed, “She mistook—she mistook; I could not, I am sure, recollect; she asked me if I remembered any.”
“She consulted you, then?”
“She asked my advice,—told me that——”
“I particularly requested her,” interrupted the general, “not to ask your advice; I desired her not to speak to you on the subject—not to consult you. Deceit—double-dealing in every thing she does, I find.”