“My lady, coming to meet you, Miss Stanley.”
It was Cecilia herself. But Cecilia so changed in her whole appearance, that Helen would scarcely have known her. She was so much struck that she hardly knew what was said; but the carriage-doors were opened, and Lady Cecilia was beside her, and Cockburn shut the door without permitting one moment’s delay, and on they drove.
Lady Cecilia was excessively agitated. Helen had not power to utter a word, and was glad that Cecilia went on speaking very fast; though she spoke without appearing to know well what she was saying: of Helen’s goodness in coming so quickly, of her fears that she would never have been in time—“but she was in time,—her mother had not yet arrived. Clarendon had gone to meet her on the road, she believed—she was not quite certain.”
That seemed very extraordinary to Helen. “Not quite certain?” said she.
“No, I am not,” replied Cecilia, and she coloured; her very pale cheek flushed; but she explained not at all, she left that subject, and spoke of the friends Helen had left at Llansillen—then suddenly of her mother’s return—her hopes—her fears—and then, without going on to the natural idea of seeing her mother, and of how soon they should see her, began to talk of Beauclerc—of Mr. Churchill’s being quite out of danger—of the general’s expectation of Beauclerc’s immediate return. “And then, my dearest Helen,” said she, “all will be——-”
“Oh! I do not know how it will be!” cried she, her tone changing suddenly; and, from the breathless hurry in which she had been running on, sinking at once to a low broken tone, and speaking very slowly. “I cannot tell what will become of any of us. We can never be happy again—any one of us. And it is all my doing—and I cannot die. Oh! Helen, when I tell you——-”
She stopped, and Miss Clarendon’s warning counsel, all her own past experience, were full in Helen’s mind; and after a moment’s silence, she stopped Cecilia just as she seemed to have gathered power to speak, and begged that she would not tell her any thing that was to be kept secret. She could not, would not hear any secrets; she turned her head aside, and let down the glass, and looked out, as if determined not to be compelled to receive this confidence.
“Have you, then, lost all interest, all affection for me, Helen? I deserve it!—But you need not fear me now, Helen: I have done with deception, would to Heaven I had never begun with it!”
It was the tone and look of truth—she steadily fixed her eyes upon Helen—and instead of the bright beams that used to play in those eyes, there was now a dark deep-seated sorrow, almost despair. Helen was touched to the heart: it was indeed impossible for her, it would have been impossible for any one who had any feeling, to have looked upon Lady Cecilia Clarendon at that moment, and to have recollected what she had so lately been, without pity. The friend of her childhood looked upon her with all the poignant anguish of compassion—
“Oh! my dear Cecilia! how changed!”