"Answer me: candid and generous Helen: do you not now see that it
was more your duty to stay in your own safe country, protected by
respectable friends, than to come hither courting danger, and the worst
of dangers to a virtuous wife? Believe me, the passive virtue of painful
but quiet endurance of injury was the virtue for you to practise. This
quixotic daring looked like duty; but was not duty, Helen, and could
only end in disappointment: for tell me, have you not found that you
have thus suffered and thus dared for an ingrate?"
My silence answered the question.
"Enough!" resumed De Walden; "and I feel that I have been cruel; but
mine has been the reproof of friendship, wrung from me by the indignant
agony of knowing that even I cannot perhaps protect you from the insults
which I dread. Oh! why did they let you come hither? I am sure your mind
was not itself when you thought of it."
"You are right. The idea had taken hold of my imagination then
unnaturally raised, and come I would. But my physician approved my
coming; for he thought it safer for me, and thought, if I was not
indulged, that my reason, if not my life, might suffer."
This statement completely overset De Walden's self-command; he blamed
himself for what he had said--accused himself of cruelty--extolled the
patient sweetness with which I had heard him, and had condescended to
justify myself. Then, striking his forehead, he exclaimed, "And I, alas!
am powerless to save a being like this! But save her, THOU," he added,
lifting his clasped hands to heaven.
The hour of my appointment at the prison now arrived again, and De
Walden accompanied me thither. I did not see Benoit; but I was admitted
directly, and my conductor, opening the door, said, "A female citizen
desires to see you."
"Indeed!" said Pendarves in a tone of joy; but he started, and looked
disappointed, when he saw me.
"Is it you, Helen?" said he.
"Did you expect it was any one else?"
"Not much," he replied, evidently disconcerted; "not much. It is only a
primitive old-fashioned wife like yourself who would follow an unworthy
husband to a prison."
"And to a scaffold, if necessary," cried I with energy.
"Helen!" said Pendarves in a deep but caustic tone, "spare me! spare me!
This excess of goodness--"