“No—oh! no—no—no!” she gasped.
“I say,” continued her father, “that the necessity is imperious.
“I cannot.”
“You shall.”
“I dare not.”
“Dare not! Listen—hear what there is need for you to dare. Helen, I am a beggar!”
Helen almost shrieked; he uttered those words in a tone so frightful.
“Yes,” he repeated; “I stand on the verge of bankruptcy—beggary—God knows what horrors! you can save me.”
Helen clasped her hands, and sobbed convulsively.
“You, Helen, can, I swear to you, save me—your mother—the house itself, from destruction and disgrace. My Lord Elsingham, whom you met at dinner, is a peer of enormous wealth; he has just expressed himself greatly prepossessed in your favour. It rests with you to follow up this favourable impression, and he is your own—the coronet of a peeress will grace your temples. Your sister will, I trust, win the Duke; and in these two marriages we may defy fate itself. You, Helen, will prove my salvation! Do only but this, and the agony of the past will be compensated by the splendour of the future.”