Gaspar entered the sitting-room with a complaint on his lips against “treacherous weather” on that clear April morn, for he was never weary of contrasting the climate of England with that of Jamaica, much to the disadvantage of the former, though the heat of the latter seemed to have dried up and withered his frame. He seated himself at the table, and began cutting the stale loaf (bread at the lodge was always stale), but interrupted himself with the observation, “How one misses the papers of a morning! Isa, I wish you’d ask your uncle, the baronet, to send over the Times every day.”
“I should hardly like to ask that favour,” replied Isa, leaving the window, and joining her brother at the breakfast-table.
“And why not?” inquired Gaspar peevishly; “are you afraid of robbing the servant’s hall?”
“No,” said Isa, as she occupied herself with the tea-caddy; “but my uncle would naturally think that we might take in a paper for ourselves, instead of putting him to the inconvenience of sending a mile every morning.”
“I’m not the idiot to throw away my money on what may be had for the asking; you have so much foolish pride,” muttered Mr. Gritton. “I feel myself out of the world where I can’t get a glimpse of the money-market or the shipping report.”
That word “shipping” served as a cue to Isa. While sitting by the window she had been revolving in her mind how she should introduce the subject of her father’s dying message to Gaspar. Isa was convinced that her long silence had been sinful, and having “screwed up her courage to the sticking point,” was on the watch for an opportunity of saying what she had determined should be said. Too anxious to make some commencement to be able to do so without the appearance of effort, Isa abruptly remarked, in a tone that betrayed a little nervousness, “Is not your interest in the shipping chiefly on account of the Orissa?”
“The Orissa?” repeated Mr. Gritton in accents of surprise; “why, all the world knows that she foundered nigh four years ago, passengers saved, cargo lost, and the greater part uninsured.”
“Had you anything to do with the vessel?” asked Isa, timidly feeling her way.
Gaspar looked a little embarrassed by the question. “Yes—no,” he replied, almost with a stammer. “I might have had a stake in that vessel—I thought of having—’twas lucky I had not; there had been such a run for certain goods in the West Indian market, that the cargo was expected to bring double its value. But—but you know nothing and care nothing about matters of business,” he added, stretching out his hand for the cup of tea which his sister had poured out. “Has the post brought any letters this morning?”
Isa did not suffer the current of conversation to be thus abruptly turned. Merely shaking her head in reply to the question, she nerved herself to go one step further. “Who was the orphan whose property was in some way or other connected with the Orissa?”