She was so full of this really involuntary, unwilling sensation, and so anxious to feel glad that all cause for apprehension on her father’s part was over, that she did not hear the much louder jarring and grinding of the wheels with which the big _berline_, as soon as it had passed her, was stopped. Helen felt slightly unsteady so far as she herself was concerned. Her steps wavered; there was a ringing in her ears. It had been, she said to herself, something to look forward to, and it was over; and she was very glad it was over, and papa happily escaped from all annoyance. Things were getting steadier before her eyes every moment, her step was getting more assured. Then all at once she heard voices in the air. “I certainly will not wait for you,” in a somewhat severe tone, and in familiar English accents.
“Never mind, you will just have time for your own salutations, and I will follow directly,” some one said.
Helen’s feet, in spite of her, swerved, stumbled, took her half-way across the road, like feet that were drunken and beyond guidance. She had not been mistaken after all. Whatever was to come of it, had she not known it all from the very first? She was not surprised now, though the discovery set her heart beating once more as if it would break out of her breast. Of course it was he. Could anything be more precise than the description, M. Charles who had been in India? She had been quite sure of it all along.
“Once more I have to ask, is it you, Miss Goulburn? I am sure it can be no one but you.”
“Yes, it is me,” said Helen, simply (but nobody pretends that grammar and nature are the same in respect to this pronoun. She was much disturbed, and she could no more have said I than she could have flown); “and I thought it must be you they meant,” she added, with more simplicity still, “though I heard nothing but your Christian name.”
“Who was it that spoke of me? It is only by accident I have come here. I was going to Sainte-Barbe to find out if anything had been heard of you--if I could find any trace of you.”
“Sainte-Barbe! we left that, Mr Ashton, immediately----”
Helen sighed. It seemed impossible to her to lie as her father had told her--to say anything to him that was not true. It was very hard even to say what she did falteringly, “We did not mean to stay there, anyhow.”