“Oh dear no!” cried Sir John, alarmed. He had sounded Charley, but had not got a promising response, and now thought it wisest to ignore the plan altogether. “Oh, certainly not. I have not said a word to him, my dear Comtesse. Fancy bringing an Englishman here with the idea that he was on sight! Oh dear no! I brought him on the chance that they might fancy each other, the most likely thing in the world—a pretty girl like Thérèse, and a nice young fellow. It was the most natural thing that they should fall in love with each other.”
“Ah, fall in lofe! that was not my idea,” said Madame de Vieux-bois—Sir John spoke his native language, in which she was not an expert. And after this conversation the Comtesse put her daughters on their guard. “Mes enfans,” she said privately, “we will postpone the question. Ce Monsieur Charles ne me plaît pas. There is something about him—— And I find, besides, that it is too soon to think of marrying Thérèse: she is but seventeen. It will be enough to lose thee, ma Cécile—enough for one year.”
Madame la Comtesse was far too careful a mother to permit her child’s thoughts to dwell upon any one who might be found unresponsive. The girls understood more or less, and they declared their mamma to have reason, as indeed she had in the fullest sense of the word. This, however, subdued Thérèse a little; not that she felt disappointed in respect to Charley Ashton, but that she no longer felt herself in the important position of being about to make the great decision of her life. She could not take Helen aside, as she had intended to do, with pretty airs of gravity, and ask her advice with solemn meaning. “Est-ce qu’il te plaît?” she had intended to say, curving her young brows with all the seriousness that became so momentous a question. She felt that she was coming down from an anticipated elevation, when she had no such important decision to make. And Cécile, too, was disappointed. The crisis was manqué. It failed in the double seriousness, the weighty character she had intended it to have. If they were but a little more reasonable, these Englishmen—a little more amenable to rule! All the time, however, Cécile piqued herself very much upon the delightful fact that her John and she had come together by no arrangement, but had for their part proceeded on strictly English principles, and fallen in love.
It would be difficult to describe the embarrassment of Helen, receiving this party of visitors, meeting the friendly enthusiasm of her companions with the knowledge of her own secret, which she could not disclose to them, in her heart, and with the very much more dreadful secret of which she was the guardian, pressing itself upon her, confusing her mind and weighing heavily upon all her thoughts. She dared not look at Charley at all. To have met him even alone after the revelations of last night, after the strange incomprehensible change in their position towards each other which it had brought about, would have been confusing beyond measure. But when, added to all this, there was the terrible figure of Sir John inspecting her with British suspicion, asking her in every look, Who are you? what business have you here? and the consciousness of her father lurking in his room, whom the mistaking of a door, a wrong turning, might betray,—it may be supposed that no inexperienced girl, standing upon the threshold of her life among things unrealised, could have had a more terrible half-hour than had Helen, alone with this group, having to parry all their questions and meet all their looks without breaking down utterly or running away. She had thought it best to send Janey out to the garden, lest the child, who would have been of so much assistance to her, might make some unwitting disclosure. And there she stood alone, clasping her little delicate hands together, to meet them all, to conceal what was in her—alas! to deceive them. The tears were trembling very near poor Helen’s eyes, her voice wavered now and then as if it would break altogether, her little figure swayed; but yet she stood firm, though she could not tell how she did it. The girls put down her trouble naturally to her father’s illness. They kissed her and whispered sympathy into her ears. “Du courage!” they said, with tears of tender pity and fellow-feeling. “If mamma could but come herself!” But they had no doubt that mamma could send something that would be of use. “It is the emotion of yesterday,” they concluded, with all the ease of spectators. And then Sir John had to be told the incident of yesterday and the goodness of monsieur. This was a blessed relief to Helen, whom he had begun to interrogate about Fareham and all she knew about it.
“I suppose you did not know the last people that lived there? One of those great nouveaux riches, those men that live like princes on other people’s money. He turned out to be a swindl——”
“Helen,” whispered Cécile, drawing her apart before the sentence was completed, “Est-ce qu’il te plaît? I want you to give me your most honest opinion. Je veux qu’il te plaît! Tell me exactly, exactly what you think—for you must like him,” said Sir John’s bride, with a pretty flush of impetuous eagerness. Thérèse, who had believed that she too would have had the same question to put, had surprised certain turns of the head—certain looks which Charley addressed to her friend—and she was curious beyond measure, and bursting with a thousand questions. When the visit was over poor Helen watched them go away, waving her hand to them from the door, keeping up her smile to the last moment. She did not lose the last suspicious glance of Sir John, who looked (accidentally) at her father’s window with all the force of an inquiry, but she scarcely got the comfort of Ashton’s anxious, tender look of sympathy which told all his story to Thérèse. She was at the end of her strength, but nevertheless, she had to rouse herself to go to her father, who wanted to know every particular of the interview.
“I heard Harvey’s voice,” Mr Goulburn said. “There was always something objectionable in his voice. Big Philistine! Cécile de Vieux-bois is a great deal too good for him. He has dined with me dozens of times, but I think it was always in town, and at my club. He could not have any suspicion. Did he seem to you to have any suspicion, Helen?”
“He had a great deal of suspicion, papa, but I don’t think he knew what he suspected. He can’t understand what we are doing here. Provided,” said Helen, with a little French idiom of which she was unconscious, “provided he does not come another time and take us unawares.”
“He shall not take me unawares, you may trust to me, Helen; I shall not budge till the big brute is gone.”
Her father spoke in a reassuring tone, as if promising for her sake to abjure all imprudence. Their positions seemed to have changed, she could not tell how. She was no longer the wistful follower in a flight, the motive of which she was ignorant of. One would have thought rather that it was some indiscretion of hers that had brought this danger upon him, some rashness which he was too generous to reproach her with. “I will do my best for you, you may trust to me,” was what he seemed to be saying; and this brought the confusion in her mind to a climax. She went about all the long day after like one in a dream.