“She can have no motive for deceiving me in this,” said Helen: “I believe her.”
“Believe her then!” cried Miss Clarendon; “believe her, and do not believe me, and take the consequences: I have done.”
Helen sighed, but though she might feel the want of the charm of Lady Cecilia’s suavity of manner, of her agreeable, and her agreeing temper, yet she felt the safe solidity of principle in her present friend, and admired, esteemed, and loved, without fear of change, her unblenching truth. Pretty ornaments of gold cannot be worked out of the native ore; to fashion the rude mass some alloy must be used, and when the slight filigree of captivating manner comes to be tested against the sterling worth of unalloyed sincerity, weighed in the just balance of adversity, we are glad to seize the solid gold, and leave the ornaments to those that they deceive.
The fear about Lady Blanche Forrester was, however, soon set at rest, and this time Lady Cecilia was right. A letter from her to Helen announced that Lady Blanche was married!—actually married, and not to Granville Beauclerc, but to some other English gentleman at Paris, no matter whom. Lord Beltravers and Madame de St. Cymon, disappointed, had returned to London; Lady Cecilia had seen Lord Beltravers, and heard the news from him. There could be no doubt of the truth of the intelligence, and scarcely did Helen herself rejoice in it with more sincerity than did Miss Clarendon, and Helen loved her for her candour as well as for her sympathy.
Time passed on; week after week rolled away. At last General Clarendon announced to his sister, but without one word to Helen, that Mr. Churchill was pronounced out of danger. The news had been sent to his ward, the general said, and he expected Granville would return from his banishment immediately.
Quite taken up in the first tumult of her feelings at this intelligence, Helen scarcely observed that she had no letter from Cecilia. But even aunt Pennant was obliged to confess, in reply to her niece’s observation, that this was “certainly very odd! but we shall soon hear some explanation, I hope.”
Miss Clarendon shook her head; she said that she had always thought how matters would end; she judged from her brother’s letters that he began to find out that he was not the happiest of men. Yet nothing to that effect was ever said by him; one phrase only excepted, in his letter to her on her last birth-day, which began with, “In our happy days, my dear Esther.”
Miss Clarendon said nothing to Helen upon this subject; she refrained altogether from mentioning Lady Cecilia.
Two, three post-days passed without bringing any letter to Helen. The fourth, very early in the morning, long before the usual time for the arrival of the post, Rose came into her room with a letter in her hand, saying, “From General Clarendon, ma’am. His own man, Mr. Cockburn, has just this minute arrived, ma’am—from London.” With a trembling hand, Helen tore the letter open: not one word from General Clarendon! It was only a cover, containing two notes; one from Lord Davenant to the general, the other from Lady Davenant to Helen.
Lord Davenant said that Lady Davenant’s health had declined so alarmingly after their arrival at Petersburgh, that he had insisted upon her return to England, and that as soon as the object of his mission was completed, he should immediately follow her. A vessel, he said, containing letters from England, had been lost, so that they were in total ignorance of what had occurred at home; and, indeed, it appeared from the direction of Lady Davenant’s note to Helen, written on her landing in England, that she had left Russia without knowing that the marriage had been broken off, or that Helen had quitted General Clarendon’s. She wrote—“Let me see you and Granville once more before I die. Be in London, at my own house, to meet me. I shall be there as soon as I can be moved.”