Truth Revealed, Hearts Torn Apart — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Gilbert tells Halford he finished Helen's diary near eight in the morning after reading through the night. His candle died before dawn, and on his mother's account he would not alarm the house for another. He admits, little honourably, that the first half pained him more than the second, because he felt a selfish gratification watching Huntingdon lose her affection; yet the whole narrative lifted an intolerable burden, as if a friend had roused him from nightmare. At the first light he hurries to Wildfell Hall. Rachel, risen many degrees in his esteem since yesterday, meets him with cold distrust and would shut the door on another Hargrave. Little Arthur draws him in at Helen's word. She asks if he has looked it over. They exchange pardon for his jealousy and her secrecy. Then she insists that because he loves her they must never meet again. She will leave when she has means, and another visit would drive her away before she finds refuge.

Gilbert cannot discuss eternal separation as a question of expedience; for him it is life and death. When he begins to argue that Huntingdon is no husband in heaven's sight, she seizes his arm and cries that no fiend could torture her like that. She will not have letters passing here to feed scandal. News may travel through Frederick, and in six months, if Gilbert's ardour has cooled into a correspondence all thought and spirit, she will answer. She will not let him rest his hope on another man's death: men of Huntingdon's habits have lived to a ripe, miserable age, and he should not wait fifteen years for a woman worn by sorrow. Gilbert has not the courage to tell her he injured her brother. He only says Frederick would have all communion at an end.

They argue heaven itself: whether they will meet as now, or as altered beings lost in a sea of glory. Helen will not let him write if he can derive no consolation from the hope of meeting where there is no more struggling of the spirit against the flesh. When that hope is strong they part. A sudden impulse neither can resist holds them in a close embrace; a whispered blessing and a command to go come while she still holds him fast. They tear themselves apart. Gilbert has a confused memory of Arthur running up the garden walk, of bolting over the wall to avoid him, and of running the steep fields until pain in his chest forces a pause. At home he tells his family he has been to see Lawrence, who is ill, and that the reports against Mrs Graham are painfully untrue. He defers the full confession until evening, when faint germs of hope he does not intend to cherish have already begun to rise.

At Woodford the servant would turn him away from a feverish master. Gilbert steps past, raps, and enters. Lawrence winces at his approach, hand on the silver bell, pale with nervous horror. The apology is clumsy: a mistake, a suspected attachment, an overheard conversation, and now the knowledge that Lawrence is her brother, and that Gilbert has seen the last of her. The last is what relieves the invalid. They forget unpleasant words on both sides. Lawrence's dry burning hand drops before Gilbert can squeeze it. He writes, in a disguised hand he barely controls, a note to put Helen on her guard against exaggerated reports of his illness. Gilbert posts it on the way home. Lawrence is already easier. Gilbert adds nothing of his own.