Returning to my aunt's chair, I observed dear Mr. Godfrey searching for
something softly, here and there, in different parts of the room. Before
I could offer to assist him he had found what he wanted. He came back to
my aunt and me, with his declaration of innocence in one hand, and with
a box of matches in the other.
"Dear aunt, a little conspiracy!" he said. "Dear Miss Clack, a pious
fraud which even your high moral rectitude will excuse! Will you leave
Rachel to suppose that I accept the generous self-sacrifice which has
signed this paper? And will you kindly bear witness that I destroy it
in your presence, before I leave the house?" He kindled a match, and,
lighting the paper, laid it to burn in a plate on the table. "Any
trifling inconvenience that I may suffer is as nothing," he remarked,
"compared with the importance of preserving that pure name from the
contaminating contact of the world. There! We have reduced it to a
little harmless heap of ashes; and our dear impulsive Rachel will never
know what we have done! How do you feel? My precious friends, how do you
feel? For my poor part, I am as light-hearted as a boy!"
He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my aunt,
and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct
to speak. I closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual
self-forgetfulness, to my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh the
ecstasy, the pure, unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat--I hardly
know on what--quite lost in my own exalted feelings. When I opened
my eyes again, it was like descending from heaven to earth. There was
nobody but my aunt in the room. He had gone.
I should like to stop here--I should like to close my narrative with
the record of Mr. Godfrey's noble conduct. Unhappily there is more, much
more, which the unrelenting pecuniary pressure of Mr. Blake's cheque
obliges me to tell. The painful disclosures which were to reveal
themselves in my presence, during that Tuesday's visit to Montagu
Square, were not at an end yet.
Finding myself alone with Lady Verinder, I turned naturally to the
subject of her health; touching delicately on the strange anxiety which
she had shown to conceal her indisposition, and the remedy applied to
it, from the observation of her daughter.
My aunt's reply greatly surprised me.
"Drusilla," she said (if I have not already mentioned that my Christian
name is Drusilla, permit me to mention it now), "you are touching quite
innocently, I know--on a very distressing subject."
I rose immediately. Delicacy left me but one alternative--the
alternative, after first making my apologies, of taking my leave. Lady
Verinder stopped me, and insisted on my sitting down again.