Gaspar fixed on his sister a gaze so keen and suspicious that it aroused in her bosom an emotion of indignation. “Were you intimate with her, or with any of the Maddens?” he inquired, in the tone of a lawyer cross-questioning a witness. Isa shrank as if his rough hand had touched a scarcely healed wound.
“I was never intimate with Cora,” she replied; “it seemed to me that she disliked me, but I never knew till now that she had any cause to do so.”
“She had no cause—none—none,” said Gaspar, almost stuttering in the eagerness of his denial. “I told you and I tell you again, that you utterly mistook the meaning of that message from my father. I could not help the ship going down—I had always dealt fairly by Miss Madden.”
There are occasions when something in the manner of a speaker serves not only to neutralize the force of his words, but actually to impress on the hearer a strong contradiction of the meaning intended. Such was the case with Gaspar’s. Isa had had a suspicion that her brother had wronged Cora in some pecuniary matter, but his manner of denying it changed suspicion into conviction, and it kindled her indignation to believe that he was now adding falsehood to fraud. The very air of the room grew oppressive to Isa, the presence of Gaspar was painful, and when Mr. Gritton, after his stammered-forth declaration, became again absorbed in the Times, making the rustling paper a screen between himself and his sister, Isa rose, unwilling to prolong so unpleasant a visit. The parting between brother and sister was cold and constrained; Gaspar saw that he had not satisfied Isa, and mingled resentment, fear, and shame, struggled together in his breast. Isa gave a long-drawn sigh of relief when she found herself again in the open air, and could turn her back upon Wildwaste Lodge.
“I am certain that wrong has been done,” thought Isa, as she slowly bent her steps towards Bolder’s dwelling, “but it is not for me to repair it. Cora has been sent poverty, doubtless, as a well-merited chastisement; let me banish the subject from my mind. But why is it that my interest in the orphan’s cause has so much cooled since I have learned that orphan’s name? Why is it that even with my distress and shame on account of my unhappy brother there is mingled—dare I own it—something that resembles a feeling of gratified revenge! Here, indeed, is a Midianite in the soul! Cora is the only being upon earth whom I regard with actual aversion, but I knew not till now how such aversion could warp my sense of justice—of right! Oh! what revelations God makes to us of the evil lurking within our own hearts, which the world had not suspected, which we had never suspected ourselves!”
To Isa’s self-reproach was added another emotion as painful,—the fear that duty might call for some effort on her part to set right what was wrong, to work on the conscience of her brother, to try to induce him to retrace his steps if he had wandered from the path of rectitude. Isa trembled at the very thought of what might lie before her; never previously had duty worn to her an aspect so repulsive. Isa knew that she ought to endeavour, by self-denying kindness, to strengthen her influence over Gaspar; that it should be one of the chief objects of her life to win his confidence and his love; instead of doing this, she could not help perceiving with mortification that, since coming to Wildwaste, she had been steadily losing ground in the affections of her brother. He thought her selfish, worldly, indifferent to his comfort. Could it be that she was indeed so? Were her most pure and innocent earthly enjoyments becoming a snare to her soul?
Such distressing reflections kept Isa very silent as she retraced her steps towards Castle Lestrange by the side of Rebekah Holdich. The steward’s wife had too much delicacy to intrude conversation where she saw that it would not be welcome; she perceived that the short visit to the Lodge had had the effect of damping the spirits of Miss Gritton. Rebekah’s own heart, on the contrary, was filled with gladness, on account of the change which she had found in one who had once appeared to her hard and unimpressionable as granite. Tychicus had ever seemed to Rebekah an opinionative, self-righteous man, and though she had pitied his sufferings, and had done what she could to relieve them, her compassion for the invalid had not been strengthened by personal regard. But on this day Rebekah had found Tychicus softened, humbled, subdued. She had heard him for the first time own that it had been good for him to be afflicted, for he had learned more of himself and of his Saviour in trouble than he had ever known in prosperous days. The furnace was doing its work; and while Mrs. Bolder plaintively lamented that her husband must be “down in heart, to do himself such injustice,” her friend was secretly rejoicing that the Pharisee as well as the publican may be led to cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”
“I remember,” thought Rebekah, “what Mr. Eardley once said to my boy when he stood watching a caterpillar spinning a very beautiful cocoon. ‘God sets that little creature a task to do, and diligently and skilfully he does it; and so God gives us good works to perform in His name and for His sake. But were the insect to remain satisfied for ever in the silken ball which he is weaving, it would become not his home but his tomb. No; forcing a way through it, and not resting in it, will the winged creature reach sunshine and air. He must leave his own works behind, if he would shine in freedom and joy. And so it is with the Christian. If he rest in his own works, whatever they may be, he is dead to God and lost to glory; he is making of what he may deem virtues a barrier between himself and his Saviour.’ Yes,” mused Rebekah; “God be praised that poor Bolder is making his way through the silken web; he is feeling the need of other righteousness than his own.”
As soon as Isa arrived at the Castle, she tried to put away all remembrance of her painful visit to Wildwaste, but it haunted her during the greater part of the day. In the evening, however, when a circle of friends gathered around Sir Digby’s hospitable board, her efforts were more successful. Isa was naturally formed both to attract in society and to enjoy it; she delighted in “the feast of reason and the flow of soul;” her spirits had the elasticity of youth, and as she sat at the head of her uncle’s table, with everything that could please and gratify around her, Isa felt that life might still become to her a bright and joyous thing. Her soul was as a well-tuned harp, giving out cheerful and harmonious music, till a few sentences overheard of the conversation between two of the guests jarred on her as if a discordant string had been suddenly touched, and brought the shadow of past trial over the brightness of present enjoyment.
“You know Lionel Madden, then?”