"Then I can tell you, Helen."

"You can!"

"And will. Helen, you could not speak to me till you had consulted--arranged--settled what was to be said--what not to be said--what told--what left untold."

Between each half sentence he darted looks at her, defying hers to contradict--and she could not contradict by word or look. "You could not speak," continued he pa.s.sionately, "till you had well determined what was to be told--what left untold to me! To me, Helen, your confiding--devoted--accepted lover! for I protest before Heaven, had I knelt at the altar with you, Helen Stanley, not more yours, not more mine could I have deemed you--not more secure of your love and truth--your truth, for what is love without it!--not more secure of perfect felicity could I have been on earth than I was when we two sat together but yesterday evening on that bank. Your words--your looks--and still your looks--But what signify tears!--Tears, women's tears! Oh!

what is woman!--and what is man that believes in her?--weaker still?"

"Hear me!--hear me!"

"Hear you?--No, Helen, do not now ask me to hear you.--Do not force me to hear you.--Do not debase, do not sully, that perfect image of truth.--Do not sink yourself, Helen, from that height at which it was my entranced felicity to see you. Leave me one blessed, one sacred illusion. No," cried he, with increasing vehemence, "say nothing of all you have prepared--not one arranged word conned over in your midnight and your morning consultations," pointing back to the window of her dressing-room, where he had seen her and Lady Cecilia.

"You saw," Helen began----

"Yes.--Am I blind, think you?--I wish I were. Oh! that I could be again the believing, fond, happy dupe I was but yesterday evening!"

"Dupe!" repeated Helen. "But pour out all--all, dear Granville.

Think--say--what you will--reproach-abuse me as you please. It is a relief--take it--for I have none to give."

"None!" cried he, his tone suddenly changing, "no relief to give!--What!

have you nothing to say?--No explanation?--Why speak to me then at all?"

"To tell you so at once--to end your suspense--to tell you that I cannot explain. The midnight consultation and the morning, were not to prepare for you excuse or apology, but to decide whether I could tell you the whole; and since that cannot be, I determined not to enter into any explanation. I am glad that you do not wish to hear any."

"Answer me one question," said he:--"that picture-did you give it to Colonel D'Aubigny?"

"No. That is a question I can answer. No--he stole it from Cecilia's portfolio. Ask me no more."

"One question more--"

"No, not one more--I cannot tell you anything more."

She was silent for a moment, he withdrew his eyes, and she went on.

"Granville! I must now put your love and esteem for me to the test. If that love be what I believe it to be; if your confidence in me is what I think it ought to be, I am now going to try it. There is a mystery which I cannot explain. I tell you this, and yet I expect you to believe that I am innocent of anything wrong but the concealment. There are circ.u.mstances which I cannot tell you."

"But why?" interrupted Beauclerc.--"Ought there to be any circ.u.mstances which cannot be told to the man to whom you have plighted your faith?

Away with this 'cannot--this mystery!' Did not I tell you every folly of my life--every fault? And what is this?--in itself, nothing!--concealment everything--Oh! Helen--"

She was going to say, "If it concerned only myself,"--but that would at once betray Cecilia, and she went on.--"If it were in my opinion right to tell it to you, I would. On this point, Granville, leave me to judge and act for myself. This is the test to which I put your love--put mine to any test you will, but if your confidence in me is not sufficient to endure this trial, we can never be happy together." She spoke very low: but Beauclerc listened with such intensity that he could not only distinguish every syllable she said, but could distinctly hear the beating of her heart, which throbbed violently, in spite of all her efforts to be calm. "Can you trust me?" concluded she.

"I can," cried he. "I can--I do! By Heaven I do! I think you an angel, and legions of devils could not convince me of the contrary. I trust your word--I trust that heavenly countenance--I trust entirely----"

He offered, and she took his offered hand. "I trust entirely. Not one question more shall I ask--not a suspicion shall I have: you put me to the test, you shall find me stand it."

"Can you?" said she; "you know how much I ask. I acknowledge a mystery, and yet I ask you to believe that I am not wrong."

"I know," said she; "you shall see." And both in happiness once more, they returned to the house.

"I love her a thousand times better than ever," thought Beauclerc, "for the independence of mind she shows in thus braving my opinion, daring to set all upon the cast--something n.o.ble in this! I am to form my own judgment of her, and I will, independently of what any other human being may say or think. The general, with his strict, narrow, conventional notions, has not an idea of the kind of woman I like, or of what Helen really is. He sees in Helen only the discreet proper-behaved young lady, adapted, so nicely adapted to her place in society, to nitch and notch in, and to be of no sort of value out of it. Give me a being able to stand alone, to think and feel, decide and act, for herself. Were Helen only what the general thinks her, she would not be for me; while she is what I think her, I love--I adore!" And when he saw his guardian, Beauclerc declared that, though Helen had entered into no explanations, he was perfectly satisfied.

The general answered, "I am glad you _are_ satisfied." Beauclerc perceived that the general was not; and in spite of all that he had just been saying to himself, this provoked and disgusted him. His theory of his own mind, if not quite false, was still a little at variance with his practice. His guardian's opinion swayed him powerfully, whenever he believed that it was not designed to influence him; when the opinion was repressed, he could not rest without drawing it out. "Then, you think, general," said he, "that some explanation ought to have been made?"

"No matter what I think, Granville, the affair is yours. If you are satisfied, that is all that is necessary."

Then even, because left on their own point of suspension to vibrate freely, the diamond-scales of Beauclerc's mind began to move, from some nice, unseen cause of variation. "But," said he, "General Clarendon, no one can judge without knowing facts."

"So I apprehend," said the general.

"I may be of too easy faith," replied Beauclerc.--[No reply.] "This is a point of honour."--[No denial.] "My dear general, if there be anything which weighs with you, and which you know and I do not, I think, as my friend and my guardian, you ought to tell it to me."

"Pardon me," said the general, turning away from Beauclerc as he spoke, and striking first one heel of his boot against the sc.r.a.per at the hall-door, then the other--"pardon me, Granville, I cannot admit you to be a better judge than I am myself of what I ought to do or not to do."

The tone was dry and proud, but Beauclerc's provoked imagination conceived it to be also mysterious; the scales of his mind vibrated again, but he had said he would trust--trust entirely, and he would: yet he could not succeed in banishing all doubt, till an idea started into his head--"That writing was Lady Cecilia's! I thought so at the first moment, and I let it go again. It is hers, and Helen is keeping her secret:--but could Lady Cecilia be so ungenerous--so treacherous?"

However, he had declared he would ask no questions; he was a man of honour, and he would ask none--none even of himself--a resolution which he found it surprisingly easy to keep when the doubt concerned only Lady Cecilia. Whenever the thought crossed his mind, he said to himself, "I will ask nothing--suspect n.o.body; but if it is Lady Cecilia's affair, it is all the more generous in Helen." And so, secure in this explanation, though he never allowed to himself that he admitted it, his trust in Helen was easy and complete, and his pa.s.sion for her increased every hour.

But Lady Cecilia was disturbed even by the perfect confidence and happiness of Beauclerc's manner towards Helen. She could not but fear that he had guessed the truth; and it seemed as if everything which happened tended to confirm him in his suspicions; for, whenever the mind is strongly interested on any subject, something alluding to it seems wonderfully, yet accidentally, to occur in everything that we read, or hear in common conversation, and so it now happened; things were continually said by persons wholly unconcerned, which seemed to bear upon her secret. Lady Cecilia frequently felt this with pangs of confusion, shame, and remorse; and, though Beauclerc did not watch, or play the spy upon her countenance, he could not help sometimes observing the flitting colour--the guilty changes of countenance--the a.s.sumed composure: that mind, once so artless, began to be degraded--her spirits sank; she felt that she "had lost the sunshine of a soul without a mystery!"

The day fixed for the marriage approached; Lady Cecilia had undertaken the superintendence of the _trousseau_, and Felicie was in anxious expectation of its arrival. Helen had written to the Collingwoods to announce the intended event, asking for the good bishop's sanction, as her guardian, and regretting that he could not perform the ceremony.

She had received from Lady Davenant a few lines, written just before she sailed, warm with all the enthusiasm of her ardent heart, and full of expectation that Helen's lot would be one of the happiest this world could afford. All seemed indeed to smile upon her prospects, and the only clouds which dimmed the sunshine were Cecilia's insincerity, and her feeling that the general thought her acting unhandsomely and unwisely towards his ward; but she consoled herself with the thought that he could not judge of what he did not know, that she did not deserve his displeasure, that Granville was satisfied, and if he was, why should not General Clarendon be so too? Much more serious, however, was the pain she felt on Cecilia's account. She reproached herself with betraying the trust Lady Davenant had reposed in her. That dreadful prophecy seemed now accomplishing: Cecilia's natural generosity, that for which Helen had ever most loved and admired her, the brightest, fairest parts of her character, seemed failing now; what could be more selfish than Cecilia's present conduct towards herself, more treacherous to her n.o.ble minded, her confiding husband! The openness, the perfect unreserve between the two friends, was no longer what it had been.

Helen, however, felt the constraint between them the less as she was almost constantly with Beauclerc, and in her young happiness she hoped all would be right. Cecilia would tell the general, and they would be as intimate, as affectionate, as they had ever been.

One morning General Clarendon, stopping Cecilia as she was coming down to breakfast, announced that he was obliged to set off instantly for London, on business which could not be delayed, and that she must settle with Miss Stanley whether they would accompany him or remain at Clarendon Park. He did not know, he said, how long he might be detained.

Cecilia was astonished, and excessively curious; she tried her utmost address to discover what was the nature of his business, in vain. All that remained was to do as he required without more words. He left the room, and Cecilia decided at once that they had better accompany him.

She dreaded some delay; she thought that, if the general went alone to town, he might be detained Heaven knows how long; and though the marriage must be postponed at all events, yet if they went with the general, the ceremony might be performed in town as well as at Clarendon Park; and she with some difficulty convinced Helen of this. Beauclerc feared nothing but delay. They were to go. Lady Cecilia announced their decision to the general, who immediately set off, and the others in a few hours followed him.

CHAPTER III.

"In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London without feelings of hope and pleasure. It was to me the grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field for every species of enterprise and exertion, the metropolis of the world, of business, thought, and action.

There, I was sure to find friends and companions, to hear the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most refined sort offered daily its banquets to the mind, and new objects of interest and ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science."

These feelings, so well described by a man of genius, have probably been felt more or less by most young men who have within them any consciousness of talent, or any of that enthusiasm, that eager desire to have or to give sympathy, which, especially in youth, characterises n.o.ble natures. But after even one or two seasons in a great metropolis these feelings often change long before they are altered by age.

Granville Beauclerc had already persuaded himself that he now detested, as much as he had at first been delighted with, a London life. From his metaphysical habits of mind, and from the sensibility of his temper, he had been too soon disgusted by that sort of general politeness which, as he said, takes up the time and place of real friendship; and as for the intellectual pleasures, they were, he said, too superficial for him; and his notions of independence, too, were at this time quite incompatible with the conventional life of a great capital. His present wish was to live all the year round in the country, with the woman he loved, and in the society of a few chosen friends. Helen quite agreed with him in his taste for the country; she had scarcely ever known any other life, and yet had always been happy; and whatever youthful curiosity had been awakened in her mind as to the pleasures of London, had been now absorbed by stronger and more tender feelings. Her fate in life, she felt, was fixed, and wherever the man she loved wished to reside, that, she felt, must be her choice. With these feelings they arrived at General Clarendon's delightful house in town.

Helen's apartment, and Cecilia's, were on different floors, and had no communication with each other. It was of little consequence, as their stay in town was to be but short, yet Helen could not help observing that Cecilia did not express any regret at it, as formerly she would have done; it seemed a symptom of declining affection, of which, every the slightest indication was marked and keenly felt by Helen, the more so because she had antic.i.p.ated that such must be the consequence of all that had pa.s.sed between them, and there was now no remedy.

Among the first morning visitors admitted were Lady Castlefort and Lady Katrine Hawksby. They did not, as it struck Cecilia, seem surprised to see that Miss Stanley was Miss Stanley still, though the day for the marriage had been announced in all the papers as fixed; but they did seem now full of curiosity to know how it had come to pa.s.s, and there was rather too apparent a hope that something was going wrong. Their first inquisitive look was met by Lady Cecilia's careless glance in reply, which said better than words could express, "Nothing the matter, do not flatter yourselves." Then her expertness at general answers which give no information, completely baffled the two curious impertinents.

They could only learn that the day for the marriage was not fixed, that it could not be definitively named till some business should be settled by the general. Law business they supposed, of course. Lady Cecilia "knew nothing about it. Lawyers are such provoking wretches, with their fast bind fast find. Such an unconscionable length of time as they do take for their parchment doings, heeding nought of that little impatient flapper Cupid."

Certain that Lady Cecilia was only playing with their curiosity, yet unable to circ.u.mvent her, Lady Katrine changed the conversation, and Lady Castlefort preferred a prayer, which was, she said, the chief object of her visit, that Lady Cecilia and Miss Stanley would come to her on Monday; she was to have a few friends--a very small party, and independently of the pleasure she should have in seeing them, it would be advantageous perhaps to Miss Stanley, as Lady Castlefort, in her softest voice, added, "For from the marriage being postponed even for a few days, people might talk, and Mr. Beauclerc and Miss Stanley appearing together would prevent anybody's thinking there was any little--Nothing so proper now as for a young lady to appear with her _futur_; so I shall expect you, my dear Cecilia, and Miss Stanley,"--and so saying, she departed. Helen's objections were all overruled, and when the engagement was made known to Beauclerc, he shrugged, and shrank, and submitted; observing, "that all men, and all women, must from the moment they come within the precincts of London life, give up their time and their will to an imaginary necessity of going when we do not like it, where we do not wish, to see those whom we have no desire to see, and who do not care if they were never to see us again, except for the sake of their own reputation of playing well their own parts in the grand farce of mock civility" Helen was sorry to have joined in making an engagement for him which he seemed so much to dislike. But Lady Cecilia, laughing, maintained that half his reluctance was affectation, and the other half a lover-like spirit of monopoly, in which he should not be indulged, and instead of pretending to be indifferent to what the world might think, he ought to be proud to show Helen as a proof of his taste.

In dressing Helen this night, Felicie, excited by her lady's exhortations, displayed her utmost skill. Mademoiselle Felicie had a certain _pet.i.te metaphysique de toilette_, of which she was justly vain.

She could talk, and as much to the purpose as most people of "le genre cla.s.sique," and "le genre romantique," of the different styles of dress that suit different styles of face; and while "she worked and wondered at the work she made," she threw out from time to time her ideas on the subject to form the taste of Helen's little maid. Rose, who, in mute attention, held the light and a.s.siduously presented pins. "Not your pin so fast one after de other Miss Rose--Tenez! tenez!" cried mademoiselle.

"You tink in England alway too much of your pin in your dress, too little of our taste--too little of our elegance, too much of your what you call _tidiness_, or G.o.d know what! But never you mind dat so much, Miss Rose; and you not prim up your little mouth, but listen to me.

Never you put in one pin before you ask yourself, Miss Rose, what for I do it? In every toilette that has taste there is above all--tenez--a character--a sentiment to be support; suppose your lady is to be superbe, or she will rather be elegante, or charmante, or interessante, or distinguee--well, dat is all ver' well, and you dress to that idee, one or oder--well, very well--but none of your wat you call _odd_. No, no, never, Miss Rose--dat is not style n.o.ble; 'twill only become de pet.i.t minois of your English originale. I wash my hand of dat always."