Robert read the letter through, his face growing darker and darker as he read. When he had finished, he threw it on the fire, and Isabel rushed to the grate and rescued it, though it was smoked, and browned, and mostly illegible. But she clasped its tinder and ashes in her hands, cried over them, and finally left the room with the precious relics clasped to her heart.
"Have you gone crazy too?" called her mother.
"Let her alone!" said Robert.
"And pray what is the matter with you?"
"I am ashamed of the way you are behaving."
"It is your sister of whom you must be ashamed. Her disgraceful marriage will kill me."
"It is the result of your own doing, and withholding."
"I am to bear the blame, of course. Poor mother!"
"You never gave her any happiness, and when she got the opportunity she gave it to herself. That was natural."
"She had all the happiness I had."