“Yes, to stay there,” replied Isa, suppressing a sigh. “I feel that poor Gaspar needs me; I think that my right place is home.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Edith, reluctantly. Unwilling as she was to part with her cousin, Edith’s own views were clear on the subject; the nearest relation had the nearest claim—nothing would have induced her to leave her own father when he needed the comfort of her presence. Edith thought it wrong to try to prevent Isa from doing what she would have thought it right to do in her place.
The baronet was not, however, so forbearing. When his niece announced to him her intention of leaving the Castle on the following day, he playfully but strongly opposed her resolution. Sir Digby justly considered that Isa’s companionship was both a pleasure and an advantage to his child, while her lively conversation and intelligence made it also agreeable to himself. Sir Digby felt that his graceful niece was an ornament to his Castle, and would fain have ignored altogether her connection with “a low man retired from business, who had disfigured the neighbourhood by sticking up on the heath a cockney villa, which only wanted a swinging sign to be mistaken for a newly built public-house.”
“Having you safe here in ward in this our Castle, we shall certainly not let our prisoner go, save on parole to return within two hours,” said the baronet; “Edith, I commit the charge of our captive to you.”
“But what if I am a warder not to be trusted?” asked Edith, with a smile; “what if I connive at the captive’s escape?”
“Seriously, Isa,” said Sir Digby, “you cannot think of going back so soon to that—that damp and not very cheerful locality;” the baronet did not know how to designate the dwelling itself by any term combining courtesy with truth.
“Indeed, I must return to my brother,” said Isa.
“You will stay over Sunday, at least. I have an idea—I believe that you like attending the service at Axe.”
How greatly Isa enjoyed the Sundays spent with the Lestranges the baronet knew not. The devotional spirit which breathed through the church service was refreshing and reviving to her soul. To Mr. Eardley Isa looked up as the most faithful of pastors and the holiest of men; she met him not unfrequently at the Castle, and the deeper the knowledge that the young maiden gained of the sterling qualities of his character, the more she wondered that her eyes had ever been dazzled by unsubstantial tinsel, and the more grateful she felt to God for having preserved her from the effects of her own folly. Isa would probably have yielded to the temptation to “stay over Sunday,” but for the reflections which the story of Gideon had suggested to her mind. The grove, emblem of things in themselves lawful and desirable, which become snares when they stand in the way of duty, might not Isa find its counterpart in the pleasures of Castle Lestrange? Isa thought of the throwing down of self-will, the sacrifice of inclination, and so resisted the kind pressing of her uncle, and the more powerful pleading of her own wishes.