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She thought that Beauclerc might return; but when she found that he did not, she went to Helen, who had covered her face with her hands. "My dearest friend," said Lady Cecilia, "thank you! thank you! you did the best that was possible!" "O Cecilia!" exclaimed Helen, "to what have you exposed me?" "How did it all happen?" continued Cecilia. "Why was not that letter burnt with the rest?
He found Lady Cecilia playing with Beauclerc; Miss Stanley was looking on. Churchill was a famous billiard-player, and took his turn to show how much better than Beauclerc he performed, but this day his hand was out, his eye not good; he committed blunders of which a novice might have been ashamed. And there was Miss Stanley and there was Beauclerc by to see! and Beauclerc pitied him!
"Lend nonsense! lend to a man who cannot give any security." "Security!" said Beauclerc, with a look of unutterable contempt. "When a friend is in distress, to talk to him like an attorney, of security! Do, pray, sir, spare me that. I would rather give the money at once." "I make no doubt of it; then at once I say No, sir." "No, sir! and why do you say no?"
O Cecilia!" was Helen's first thought, when she could think after this shock not of her marriage, not of herself, not of Beauclerc, but of Cecilia's falsehood Cecilia's selfish cowardice, she thought, and could not conceive it possible, could not believe it, though it was there.
Beauclerc pointed to the account of that famous inscription on the iron gate of a church which the French found still standing, the words written by Rostopchin after the burning of his "delightful home." "Frenchmen, I have been eight years in embellishing this residence; I have lived in it happily in the bosom of my family.
The general said nothing of Beauclerc, but that he was, he believed, still at Paris. And from this time forward no more letters came from Beauclerc to Helen; as his hopes of Churchill's recovery increased, he expected every day to be released from his banishment, and was resolved to write no more till he could say that he was free.
For a little while Mervyn stood in an agony of irresolution. I'm sure I cannot understand all he felt, having never been, thank Heaven! in a like situation. I only know how much depended on it, and I don't wonder that for some seconds he thought of arresting that lank, pale, sinister figure by the fire, and denouncing him as, by his own confession, an accessory to the murder of Beauclerc.
"That would be difficult when so distinguished," said Beauclerc, with an admirable look of proud humility. "Distinguished Mr. Horace Churchill assuredly is," said Lady Davenant, looking at him from behind her newspaper. "Distinguished above all his many competitors in this age of scandal; he has really raised the art to the dignity of a science.
He had forgotten to have some of the pretty grey hairs plucked from the heron, to give to the ladies to ornament their bonnets, but Beauclerc had secured them for him, and also two or three of those much-valued, smooth, black feathers, from the head of the bird, which are so much prized that a plume of them is often set with pearls and diamonds.
He entered the library, talking to Cecilia, as Helen thought, about his horse. "No managing him! Curb him ever so little, and he is on his hind-legs directly. Give him his head, put the bridle on his neck, and he stands still; does not know which way he would go, or what he would do. The strangest fellow for a rational creature." Now it was clear it was of Beauclerc that he spoke.
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