"I am ready to know," said Helen, after a pause, her voice, in spite of her, curiously flattened.
"I am engaged to marry a man, to whom it will mean everything that I shall be, let me say, all you are. And there's a great reason why I should try to please him in those things. How strange that I should want to tell you such an intimate secret, out of my very heart! But there is no other woman I can talk to, and that look you gave me seemed to open every door within me!"
"I will help you if I can," Helen breathed, rather than spoke. Her spirit, wrestling with the certainty that crushed it, was yet ready to rise to generosity. Was it not what she had bid John Glynn do in the moment of his acutest suffering? Find a younger, fresher, more trustful life-partner than herself, and put swiftly out of mind their disastrous venture together that could not end in happiness! What right had she to be feeling these fierce heart-beats of rebellion against the child's superior claim upon him, these desperate yearnings to have him back again?
"I am ashamed to let you know what will make you think even less of me than you do. When I promised myself to John Glynn—there I've told you his name, but it doesn't matter—I did so because I thought it would make my dear daddy, who was in some sort his guardian and his father's best friend—happier than anything in the world. Also, I was flattered that he should ask me. Down at Alison's, where John lived as a boy, they think he has taken the head of his firm into business with him, and that all New York looks on admiringly. He's about the greatest hero we have after Lee and Davis. He's a splendid man, Miss Carstairs, perhaps you have heard of him? I remember now, daddy said Mr. Carstairs had spoken well of John. When that Lady Channel Fleet had the cheek to say at supper, she considered the American men, as a rule, inferior to their women, and decidedly so to Englishmen, I could have flown at her, and asked her to wait till she'd seen John."
Helen, conscious that something of the same mental protest had formulated itself in her during the same period of provocation, could not forbear a smile. Fortunately, Miss Winstanley, being fairly launched upon her confidence, did not pause for answer or comment.
"You will see, then, that I do honestly mean to be what I ought, to John—that—I have no other wish or fancy—and yet there is another influence that's come without my seeking—one that could not bring me happiness. It frightens me to think of it. I don't know what to do, where to turn. Think of putting the thing of a day and hour against the other, the safe one, the true one! Yes, it frightens me. Miss Carstairs, you are older and wiser than I, tell me what I shall do to conquer it?"
All the voices in Helen's heart sang in chorus, in answer to this simple and pathetic appeal. The voice of joy, the voice of temptation were louder for awhile than the others, but she dared not let them prevail. She had never been a demonstrative person, and the touching of strangers, under no matter what stress of sympathy, was an impossibility to her. She did not, therefore, "lock Posey in a warm embrace" and "kiss her upon the virgin brow," bidding her be of good cheer, as all would yet be well between John Glynn and herself. But she told her, calmly and dispassionately, that it is probable no girl ever grew up to womanhood to escape some errant fancy for a man whom she afterwards thanked God she had not been allowed by Destiny or her parents to marry. She counselled her to indulge in no dreams or reveries or self-questionings about the matter, but to keep to the pledge she had made, and give all her energies to the task of making a good man happy.
Posey brightened wonderfully during Miss Carstairs' little lecture. As she ran off to bed, it was with the joyful step of a freed school-girl and the feeling that she was not altogether steeped in wickedness. Half-way down the corridor, she turned, ran back, and ventured to knock again at Miss Carstairs' door. Her errand was the very feminine one of asking Helen to be so good as to undo "two wretched hooks" in the region of her shoulder-blades; a service she knew Mrs. Gasher would never at that late hour be awake to perform for her. When Miss Carstairs opened the door, standing in the aperture in some surprise to know what was wanted, Posey felt sorry and puzzled to see that her new friend's eyes were filled with tears.
As Miss Winstanley, finally relieved from the apprehension of having to spend the night in a cuirass of white voile with many little pipings of satin and a good deal of scratchy net, crept in like a thief at her own cabin-door, her room-mate roused up and groaned dismally.
"Seems to me I'm to have not a wink of sleep to-night. Just as I'd settled down for my first nap, there came a stupid steward with a note for you. I told him to put it in your berth and go out as quick as he could, and since then I haven't closed my eyes."