“I am quite well again now,” said she, “and quite composed. If Cecilia has told her husband the whole truth, she will continue to be, as she is, a happy wife; but if she have deceived him in the estimation of a single word--she is undone. With him, of all men, never will confidence, once broken, unite again. Now General Clarendon told me this morning--would I had known it before the marriage!--that he had made one point with my daughter, and only one, on the faith of which he married: the point was, that she should tell him, if she had ever loved any other man. And she told him--I fear from some words which he said afterwards--I am sure he is in the belief--the certainty, that his wife never loved any man breathing but himself.” “Nor did she,” said Helen. “I can answer for it--she has told him the truth--and she has nothing to fear, nor have you.” “You give me new life!” cried Lady Davenant, her face becoming suddenly radiant with hope; “but how can you answer for this, Helen? You had no part in any deceit, I am sure, but there was something about a miniature of you, which I found in Colonel D’Aubigny’s hands one day. That was done, I thought at the time, to deceive me, to make me believe that you were his object.--Deceit there was.” “On his part,” said Helen, “much and always; but on Cecilia’s there was only, from her over-awe of you, some little concealment; but the whole was broken off and repented of, whatever little there was, long since. And as to loving him, she never did; she told me so then, and often and often she has told me so since.” “Convince me of that,” said Lady Davenant; “convince me that she thought what she said. I believe, indeed, that till she met General Clarendon she never felt any enthusiastic attachment, but I thought she liked that man--it was all coquetry, flirting nonsense perhaps. Be it so--I am willing to believe it. Convince me but that she is true--there is the only point of consequence. The man is dead and gone, the whole in oblivion, and all that is of importance is her truth; convince me but of that, and I am a happy mother.” Helen brought recollections, and proofs from conversations at the time and letters since, confirming at least Cecilia’s own belief that she had never loved the man, that it was all vanity on her part and deception on his: Lady Davenant listened, willing to be convinced. “And now,” said she, “let us put this matter out of our minds entirely--I want to talk to you of yourself.” She took Helen out with her in her pony-phaeton, and spoke of Granville Beauclerc, and of his and Helen’s prospects of happiness.