Cecilia embraced her, thanked her, blessed her, and hastily left the room, but in an instant afterward she returned, and said, “One thing I forgot, and I must tell you. Think of my forgetting it! The letters are not signed with my real name, they are signed Emma--Henry and Emma!--Oh folly, folly! My dear, dear friend! save me but now, and I never will be guilty of the least deception again during my whole life; believe me, believe me! When once my mother is safely gone I will tell Clarendon all. Look at me, dear Helen, look at me and believe me.” And Helen looked at her, and Helen believed her. CHAPTER XV. Helen slept no more this night. When alone in the stillness of the long hours, she went over and over again all that had passed, what Cecilia had said, what she had at first thought and afterwards felt, all the persuasions by which she had been wrought upon, and, on the contrary, all the reasons by which she ought to be decided; backward and forward her mind vibrated, and its painful vacillation could not be stilled. “What am I going to do? To tell a falsehood! That cannot be right; but in the circumstances--yet this is Cecilia’s own way of palliating the fault that her mother so fears in her--that her mother trusted to me to guard her against; and now, already, even before Lady Davenant has left us, I am going to assist Cecilia in deceiving her husband, and on that very dangerous point--Colonel D’Aubigny.” Lady Davenant’s foreboding having already been so far accomplished struck Helen fearfully, and her warning voice in the dead silence of that night sounded, and her look was upon her, so strongly, that she for an instant hid her head to get rid of her image. “But what _can_ I do? her own life is at stake! No less a motive could move me, but this ought--must--shall decide me. Yet, if Lady Davenant were to know it!--and I, in the last hours I have to pass with her--the last I ever may have with her, shall I deceive her? But it is not deceit, only prudence--necessary prudence; what a physician would order, what even humanity requires. I am satisfied it is quite right, quite, and I will go to sleep that I may be strong, and calm, and do it all well in the morning. After all, I have been too cowardly; frightening myself about nothing; too scrupulous--for what is it I have promised? only to receive the letters as if they were mine. Not to _say_ that they are mine; he will not ask me, Cecilia thinks he will not ask me. But how can she tell? if he should, what _can_ I do? I must then answer that they are mine. Indeed it is the same thing, for I should lead him to believe it as much by my receiving them in silence; it will be telling or acting an absolute falsehood, and can that ever be right?” Back it came to the same point, and in vain her cheek settled on the pillow and she thought she could sleep. Then with closed eyes she considered how the general would look, and speak, or not speak. “What