Isa felt bewildered by the sudden disclosure of the name of the orphan in whom she had taken such painful interest; so much so, that she could hardly tell at that time whether the explanation of Gaspar were satisfactory or not to her mind. When the name of Cora was uttered, Isa’s surprise had made her for a moment look full in the face of her brother, and that face—which had been almost ghastly—had become suffused with a colour which she had never before seen upon it, and the eyes of Gaspar had instantly sunk beneath the gaze of her own. Isa hardly noticed this in the excitement of the instant, but it afterwards often recurred to her mind, with an ever-strengthening persuasion that her brother had not told her all.
The subject of the death-bed message was dropped, but Isa felt during the remainder of that morning that her brother’s nerves had been shaken, and that his spirits were utterly out of tune; and she could not but refer this to its natural cause—the conversation at breakfast. Nothing pleased Mr. Gritton: the tea was bitter, cold, undrinkable; the room full of draughts; Lottie a useless idiot, and Mr. Eardley little better for having ever recommended her. Isa came in for her full share of peevish reproach, almost more difficult to be borne than angry rebuke. It was a great relief to the young lady when her companion at length quitted her boudoir to go down to his accounts, though Isa well knew that these accounts would afford a new cause of grievance, and that all her care to manage household affairs with strict economy would not prevent pettish remarks on the extravagance of the Saturday bills.
“I shall not be able to endure this kind of life long,” murmured Isa to herself, as she returned from ordering dinner, having had to encounter the ill-temper of Hannah, who, while her master inveighed against reckless extravagance, complained on the other hand that there were “some ladies as think that their servants can live upon nothing.” “I was never made to bear all this constant fret and worry,” sighed the discouraged Isa; “this perpetual effort to please, without the possibility of succeeding in doing so.” Isa was, like so many others, tempted to think that the post in which Providence had placed her was not the one that suited her; that she would do better, be better in another. Disappointment, discontent, distrust, had not been driven forth from her heart. Again Isa seated herself by the window which commanded a view of the towers of Lestrange, feeling disinclined to settle to any occupation, to take up her work, or to finish her book.
A visit from Edith made a delightful break on the dreary solitude of Isa.
“I have come with a message from papa, dear Isa,” cried the baronet’s daughter, after an affectionate greeting had passed between the cousins; “he has charged me to carry you back captive with me to the Castle, to remain there as long as we can make our prisoner happy. Oh, don’t make resistance—lay down your arms and surrender at once!” The pleading eyes seconded well the playful petition of the lips.
A prisoner! nay, to Isa the invitation came like an offer of freedom to one in irksome bondage. Her countenance lighted up with pleasure. “I should gladly surrender to so generous a foe,” she replied, “only—my brother—”
“He will let me carry you off, I am sure that he will,” cried Edith.
“I will go and ask him,” said Isa, hastily rising and quitting the room.
Edith, left thus alone, looked around the boudoir of her cousin with mingled pity and surprise. “Poor Isa, is this her abode? so small, so wretchedly furnished, so dreary and bare. And what a view from the window!” added the heiress, as she sauntered up to the casement; “the very look of those tumble-down cottages would make one miserable; and as for that hideous manufactory, it would spoil the fairest landscape in the world. No wonder that Isa was not able to echo my words when I said, ‘There is no place like home.’”
Isa soon returned with her brother’s permission for her to accompany her cousin, a permission which he could hardly have withheld. Edith knew not how ungraciously it had been accorded, how bitterly Gaspar had remarked, “I knew that you would never care to stay quietly here with an invalid brother.”