She sat down, but catching a view of Beauclerc was alarmed by his aspect--and Helen! her head was bent down behind the harp. Lady Cecilia did not know yet distinctly what had happened. The general pressed her to lean back on the cushions which he was piling up behind her. Beauclerc made a step towards Helen, but checking himself, he turned to the ecarté table. “Those counters, after all, that we were looking for--” As he spoke he pulled open the drawer. The general with his back to him was standing before Lady Cecilia, she could not see what Beauclerc was doing, but she heard the drawer open, and cried out. “Not there, Beauclerc; no counters there--you need not look there.” But before she spoke, he had given a sudden pull to the drawer, which brought it quite out, and all the contents fell upon the floor, and there was the fatal letter, open, and the words “_My dear, too dear Henry_” instantly met his eyes; he looked no farther, but in that single glance the writing seemed to him to be Lady Cecilia’s, and quick his eye turned upon her. She kept perfectly quiet, and appeared to him perfectly composed. His eye then darted in search of Helen; she had sunk upon a seat behind the harp. Through the harp-strings he caught a glimpse of her face, all pale--crimsoned it grew as he advanced: she rose instantly, took up the letter, and, without speaking or looking at any one, tore it to pieces. Beauclerc in motionless astonishment. Lady Cecilia breathed again. The general’s countenance expressed “I interfere no farther.” He left the room; and Beauclerc, without another look at Helen, followed him. For some moments after Lady Cecilia and Helen were left alone, there was a dead silence. Lady Cecilia sat with her eyes fixed upon the door through which her husband and Beauclerc had passed. 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? How came it there? Can you tell me?” “I do not know,” said Helen, “I cannot recollect.” But after some effort, she remembered that in the morning, while the general had been talking to her, she had in her confusion, when she took the packet, laid the picture and that letter beside her on the arm of the chair. She had, in her hurry of putting the other letters into her bag, forgotten this and the picture, and she supposed that they had fallen between the chair and the wall, and that they had been found and put into the table-drawer by one of the servants.