may turn out false; but it is certainly very annoying"; and then she repeated to her sister the facts stated to her by Colonel Stuart.
"Oh! is that all?" said Helen, with a sigh of relief. "In the first place, I do not believe it. I do not know why it is, but I feel as if I should distrust anything and everything asserted by Colonel Stuart; and then, supposing it to be true, worse misfortunes might have happened. I doubt whether very great riches and grandeur really do give all the happiness we suppose. But Teviot, poor Teviot!" she added, in an unusual tone of tenderness, "I am afraid he will feel all this deeply, even if it ends well. He will hate the discussions and all the publicity given to his family history; and if it ends ill! Oh, Amelia, does he know it yet?"
"No, Colonel Stuart says that except 'the scamp,' as he calls Mr. Lorimer, and his advisers, it is known to no one but himself."
"I am glad," said Helen in a tone of deep feeling; "for then I shall be with Teviot when he hears it, and I think I shall be a comfort to him." There was silence between the sisters for a few minutes, and then Helen, throwing her arms round Amelia's neck, said in a faltering voice, "Dearest, I have been wrong, very wrong, in the whole course of my married life; so unlike what you would have been. I cannot talk even to you about it; but the worst of all is that I did not go with my husband to Lisbon. Amelia, I am very unhappy, but to-morrow I shall hear from him, and I mean to be at Southampton before he lands. So whatever bad news may come, we may hear it together."
"You are right, darling," said Amelia, who was too honest and true-hearted to say that Helen condemned herself unjustly. "It is better not to discuss the past if it fret my Helen, but she will be a happy good little wife for the future, and so good-night."
