"She has forced herself into our family without our desire or permission," she would say, "and if she could only understand it she is a great wrong and annoyance to us. If she does teach Christina music and singing and French, and entertain you both now and then, it is her bounden duty to do that, and more. She is a born schoolmistress anyway, and no doubt feels quite at home teaching you any little thing she can."
This was not a happy life for Theodora, but she had chosen it, and our choices are our destiny. It was now her duty to make the best of it, and if Robert was only a little loving and just, her fine spirits and hopeful temper made her gay as a bird in spring. Her enthusiasms were incomprehensible to the three women, they were even repulsive; for neither the selfish, ill-tempered mother, nor the selfish, servile daughters, could understand that joy, which, coming from the inner life, is illimitably glad and hopeful, "something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."
But even Robert was now ashamed of his enthusiasms as a lover, as a married man he considered them quite out of place. They had served their purpose and ought to be retired from the sensible atmosphere of daily life. So he allowed the noblest and tenderest symbols of love to die of cruel neglect, and his occasional breakfasts with Theodora were the only remnant of his once passionate personal love. He was quite willing to consider Dora as belonging to the whole family, and he smiled grimly if he remembered the days in which he was intensely jealous even of her own father and mother's claim on her affection.
One great reason for Theodora's life being so troubled by dislike and unrest was doubtless because her angel was not, and could not, be friends with the angels of her new connections. They had no business to be in the same house. They got in each other's way and provoked friction. And though physical crowding is bad, spiritual crowding is much worse. Theodora had been well aware of the antagonism of her angel to her marriage with Robert Campbell. By intuitions, presentiments, omens, dreams, and even by clairaudient words, she had been warned of matrimonial troubles.
But she had an invincible faith in her influence over her intended husband, and as for a fight with others, or with circumstances, of neither was she afraid. She had always won her way triumphantly. She believed in God, she believed in herself, and she believed in humanity. The calibre of a Scotch family composed of three-fourths women, was a combination she had never seen, never heard of, never read of, and could not possibly imagine.
Yes, she had been abundantly counselled, and she remembered especially the last warning that she received before her marriage. She was at the Salutation Hotel on Lake Windermere, standing at the window of her room looking over the lovely scene. All Nature was calm as a resting wheel, the sky full of stars; all the mystery and majesty of earth, the lake, the woods, the mountains encompassed her. And as she stood there musing on the past, and on the future as connected with Robert Campbell, the voice she knew so well pleaded with her for the last time.
"Are you able?" it asked.
"Yes," she answered softly but audibly.
"The fight will be hard."
"I shall win it."