In the first place, she reminded herself that her father had suffered from an affection of the heart which must have contributed to his death, even if it had not been the principal cause of it. How could she have forgotten that fact until now?
Remembering her father’s excitement and exhaustion when she saw him last, she could see for the first time, by the light of Gordon’s story, what had afterwards occurred—the burst of ungovernable passion, the struggle, the fall, the death.
Then she told herself that Gordon had not intended to kill her father, and whatever he had done had been for love of her. "Helena was mine, and you have taken her from me, and broken her heart as well as my own." Yes, love for her and the torment of losing her had brought Gordon back to the Citadel after he had been ordered to return to his quarters. Love for her, and the delirium of a broken heart, had wrung out of him the insults which had led to the quarrel that resulted in her father’s death.
In spite of her lingering tenderness for the memory of her father, she began to see how much he had been to blame for what had happened—to think of the gross indignity, the frightful shame, the unmerciful and even unlawful degradation to which in his towering rage he had subjected Gordon. The scene came back to her with horrible distinctness now—her father crying in a half-stifled voice, "You are a traitor! A traitor who has consorted with the enemies of his country!" and then tearing Gordon’s sword from its scabbard and breaking it across his knee.
But seeing this, she also saw her own share in what had occurred. At the moment of Gordon’s deepest humiliation she had driven him away from her. Her pride had conquered her love, and instead of flinging herself into his arms as she ought to have done, whether he was in the right or in the wrong, when everybody else was trampling upon him, she had insulted him with reproaches and turned her back upon him in his disgrace.
That scene came back to her, too—Gordon at the door of the General’s house, with his deadly white face and trembling lips, stammering out, "I couldn’t help it, Helena—it was impossible for me to act otherwise," and then, bareheaded as he was, and with every badge of rank and honour gone, staggering across the garden to the gate.