“Gaspar, dear Gaspar, suffer me to speak freely and openly to you,” said Isa, whose mind had been as actively engaged as that of her brother as she had sat silent by the casement, with her untouched work lying on her knee. “When we have gone out of the straight way, surely, surely our first care should be to retrace our steps; if any wrong has been done, should it not be set right without further delay?”
“I want your help, and not your advice,” muttered Gaspar.
“Yet hear me,” said Isa earnestly, for she felt that something more precious than her brother’s interests, more dear than even his reputation, was at stake. “I know that you have been unhappy—I have seen it; your better, your nobler nature, has been oppressed by a burden which—which you may now throw off and for ever. Oh, deal frankly and fairly by Cora Madden! Give her what is her due, principal and interest, even to the utmost farthing: poverty is no evil, want itself is no evil, compared with the gnawing consciousness of possessing that which cannot have God’s blessing upon it.”
Gaspar pressed his thin bloodless lips together, as if suppressing a groan. He felt his sister’s fervent appeal—it found an echo in his own conscience; but he was not yet prepared to throw down his idol, to burst from the yoke which galled. Mr. Gritton rose hastily, without replying, and resumed his restless walk. Isa could but guess the nature of the struggle going on within, and silently pray that God might strengthen the faith of the tempted one, and give victory to the right.
If not the most painful, that was certainly one of the most tedious days that had ever been passed by Isa Gritton. Gaspar was irritable, nervous, wretched; vacillating as a pendulum, never in the same mind for twenty minutes together. He appeared to be constantly on the watch; never left the house, stood often gazing forth from the window, and nervously started at every unusual sound. There seemed to Isa to be a spell on the hands of her watch, they moved so slowly; she could not pursue her accustomed occupations, for Gaspar was unwilling to have her out of his sight, and was perpetually interrupting her with snatches of conversation. But the long day closed at last—closed in mist and rain; a dull white fog blotted out the landscape, and ere the hour of sunset, twilight closed in. Isa tried to beguile the evening by reading aloud, but even the work on commercial statistics entirely failed to interest Gaspar. His mind was abstracted, his ear painfully on the strain for other sounds than those of his sister’s melodious voice. Glad was Isa when the hour at length arrived when she could retire, and prepare herself, by devotional reading, prayer, and then rest, for whatever the morrow might bring.
