LITMIR.BIZ

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      "I can only have one opinion, mother. You know on what occasion a young man gives such a Bible. I am compelled to believe that Robert is engaged to marry some woman called Theodora, who lives probably at Kendal."

      "He can not! He shall not! He must marry Jane Dalkeith—Jane, and no other woman. I will not permit him to bring a stranger here, and an Englishwoman is out of all consideration. Theodora, indeed! Theodora!" and she flung the three words from her with a scorn no language could transcribe.

      "It is not a Scotch name, mother. I never knew any one called Theodora."

      "Scotch? the idea! Does it sound like Scotch? No, not a letter of it. There were never any Theodoras among the Traquairs, or the Campbells, and I will not have any. Robert will find that out very quickly. Why, Isabel, Honor is before Love, and Honor compels Robert to marry Jane Dalkeith. Her father saved Robert's father from utter ruin, and I believe Jane holds some claim yet upon the Campbell furnaces. It has always been understood that Robert and Jane would marry, and I am sure the poor, dear girl loves Robert."

      "I do not believe, mother, that Jane could love any one but herself; and I feel sure that if the Campbells owed her money, she would have collected it long ago. Why do you not ask Robert about the money? He will know if anything is owing."

      "Because Scotch men resent women asking questions about their business. They will not answer them truly; often they will not answer them at all."

      "Ask Jane Dalkeith herself."

      "Indeed, I will not. When you are as old as I am, you will have learned to let sleeping dogs lie."

      "Will you go and look at the Bible?"

      "It is not likely I will be so foolish. Surely you do not require to be told that Robert left it there for that purpose. He has his defence ready on the supposition that I will ask him about this Theodora. On the contrary, he shall bring the whole tale to me, beginning and end, and I shall make the telling of it as difficult and disagreeable as possible."

      "I am afraid I have interfered with your Saturday's duties, mother; but I thought you ought to know."

      "As mother and mistress I ought to know all that concerns either the family or Traquair House. I will now finish my examinations and correspondence. And Isabel, when Robert comes home, ask him no questions, and give him no hint as to what has been discovered. I am very angry at him. He ought to have told me about the woman at the very beginning of the affair; and I should have put a stop to it at once. It might have been more easily managed then than it will be now."

      "Can you put a stop to it at all, mother?"

      "Can I put a stop to it?" she cried scornfully. "I can, and I will!"

      "Robert is a very determined man."

      "And I am a very positive woman. At the last and the long, in any dispute, the woman wins."

      "Sometimes the man wins."

      "Nonsense! If he does win now and then, it is always a barren victory. He loses more than he gains."

      "I don't wish to discourage you, mother, but Robert is gey stubborn, and I feel sure that in this case he will take his own way, and no other person's way."

      "I desire you not to contradict me, Isabel." She turned to her papers, lifted her pencil, and to all appearance was entirely occupied by her bills and letters. Isabel gave her one strange, inexplicable look ere she left the room, shutting the door this time without regard to noise and with something very like temper.

      In the corridor she hesitated, standing with one foot ready to descend the stairs, but urged by a variety of feelings to take the upward flight which led to her own and her sister Christina's rooms. At present she was "out" with Christina, and they had not spoken to each other, when alone, for three days. But now the pleasure of having something new and unusual to tell, the desire to talk it over, and perhaps also a modest little wish to be friends with her sister, who was her chief confidant and ally, induced her to seek Christina in her room.

      She knocked gently at the door, and Christina said in an imperative voice, "Come in." She thought it was one of the maids, and Christina wasted no politeness on any one, unless manifestly to her own interest or pleasure. But Isabel understood the curt permission was not intended for her, and, opening the door, went into the room. Christina, who was reading, lifted her eyes and then dropped them again to the book. For she was amazed at her sister's visit, and knew not what to say, priority of birth being in English and Scotch families of some consequence. In their numerous disagreements Christina had never expected Isabel to make the first advances towards reconciliation. Almost without exception she had been the one to apologize, and she had been thinking about ending their present trouble when Isabel visited her.

      For a few minutes she was undecided, but as Isabel took a comfortable chair and was evidently going to remain, Christina realized that her elder sister had made a silent advance, and that she was expected to speak first. So she laid down her book, and pushing a stool under Isabel's feet, said in a fretful, worried voice:

      "I am so glad to see you, sister. I have been very unhappy without your company. You know I have no friend but you. I am sorry I spoke rudely to you. Forgive me!"

      "Christina, we are the world to each other. No one else seems to care anything about us, and it is foolish to quarrel."

      "It was my fault, Isabel. I ought to have known you were not wearing my collar intentionally."

      "Why should I? I have plenty of collars of my own. But we will not go into explanations. It is better to agree to forget the circumstance."

      "Life is so lonely without you, and our little chats with each other are the only pleasure I have. I wonder if there is, in all Glasgow, a house so dull as this house is."

      "It will soon be busy and gay enough. Things are going to be very different in Traquair House. They may not effect our lives much—it is too late for that, Christina—but we shall have the fun of watching the rows there are sure to be with mother. Bring your chair near to me. I have a great secret to tell you."

      As they sat down together it was impossible to avoid noticing how much they resembled each other personally. Nature had intended both of them to be beautiful, but their obtuse, grieved faces had been marred in early years by the disappointments, sorrows, and tragic mistakes of the children of long ago; and later by their pathetic acquiescence in their ill-assorted fates, and the cruel certainty of youth gone forever, without the knowledge of youth's delights. Isabel was now thirty-three years old, and Christina twenty-eight, and on their dark faces, and in their sombre, black eyes, there was a resentful gloom; the shadow of lives that felt themselves to be blighted beyond the power of any good fortune to redeem.

      The two sisters had lost hope early, and for this weakness they were partly excusable, since they had the most crushing and unsympathetic of mothers. Mrs. Campbell was a woman of iron constitution, iron nerves, and principles of steel. She was never sick, and she was angry if her children were sick; she met every trouble with fight, she was contemptuous to those who wept; she was never weary, but she made life a burden to all under her sway.

      In another way their father had been still more unfortunate to them. Intensely vain and arrogant, he had inherited a large business which he had not had the ability or the intelligence to manage. When he had nearly ruined it, the generosity of a distant relative—jealous for the honor of the name—came to the rescue; but he placed over all other authority a manager who knew what he was doing, and who was amenable to advice. Then Traquair Campbell, unwilling to acknowledge any superior, became a semi-invalid; and retired to a seclusion which had no other duty than the indulgence of his every whim and desire, making his two daughters the handmaids of his idle, self-centred hours. Year after year this slavery continued, and their youth, beauty, and education, their hopes, pleasures, and even their friends, were all demanded in sacrifice to that dreadful incarnation of Self, who made filial duty his claim on them. It was scarcely two years since they had been emancipated by his death, and the terror of the past and the shadow of it was yet over them.

      Such treatment

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