Perhaps the good angels, who watch over human lives and human destinies, might have looked with pity upon both.
As for Helen's father, and Helen herself too, if (as some severe judges may say) they erred in suffering themselves to be thus easily deceived -- in believing a man upon little more than his own testimony, and in loving him as bad men are sometimes loved, under a strong delusion, by even good women, surely the errors of unworldliness, unselfishness, and that large charity which "thinketh no evil" are not so common in this world as to be quite unpardonable.

Better, tenfold, to be sinned against than sinning.
"Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart which, if believed, Had bless'd one's life with true believing." Lord Cairnforth did not think this at the time, but he learned to do so afterward.

He learned, when time brought round its divine amende, neither to reproach himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion or deliberate injustice.
Meanwhile, the marriage was accomplished.

All that Helen's fondest friend could do was to sit and watch the event of things, as the earl determined to watch--silently, but with a vigilance that never slept.
Not passively neither.

He took immediate steps, by means which his large fortune and now wide connection easily enable him to employ, to find out exactly the position of Helen's husband, both his present circumstances, and, so far as was possible, his antecedents, at home or abroad.