"It is hardly reasonable that you should insist upon my keeping secret what I have to tell you, Helen, because others are less communicative. The letters he receives and writes are surely my father's business either to impart or conceal, as he thinks best; and he is extremely anxious to learn your opinion respecting your mother's letter, and his answer to it. He certainly did not imagine that they had been kept secret from you."
"Do you suppose, then, that she has mentioned them to no one?"
Helen did not immediately reply, but Rosalind did. "I am very particularly mistaken, Colonel Harrington," said she, "if the Reverend William Jacob Cartwright, vicar of Wrexhill, and privy counsellor at Mowbray Park, did not superintend the writing of the one, and the reading of the other."
"Do you really think so, Miss Torrington? What do you say, Helen? do you believe this to have been the case?"
"He is very often at the Park," replied Helen.
"But do you think it possible that Mrs. Mowbray would communicate to him what she would conceal from you?" said Colonel Harrington.
This question was also left unanswered by Helen; but Rosalind again undertook to reply. "You will think me a very interfering person, I am afraid, Colonel Harrington," said she; "but many feelings keep Helen silent which do not influence me; and, as far as I am capable of judging, it is extremely proper, and perhaps important, that Sir Gilbert should know that this holy vicar never passes a day without finding or making an excuse for calling at the Park. I can hardly tell how it is, but it certainly does happen, that these visits generally take place when we--that is, Helen and I--are not in the house; but ... to confess my sins, and make a clear breast at once, I will tell you what I have never yet told Helen, and that is, that I have ordered my maid to find out, if she can, when Mr. Cartwright comes. He slipped in, however, through the library window twice yesterday, so it is possible that he may sometimes make good an entry without being observed; for it is impossible that my Judy can be always on the watch, though she is so fond of performing her needlework in that pretty trellised summer-house in the Park."
"What an excellent vidette you would make, Miss Torrington," said the young man, laughing. "But will you tell me, sincerely, and without any shadow of jesting, why it is that you have been so anxious to watch the movements of this reverend gentleman?"
