There was no blessing in Mrs. Campbell's heart. She looked at her girls in silence until she heard the closing of the front door, then she asked: "What do you say to Mr. St. Claire's story?" and Isabel answered: "I say what you said, mother—grant us patience!"
"Tut, Isabel! Patience? Nonsense! I think little of that grace. Theodora may be a beauty, a school-teacher, and an authoress, but we three women can match her."
"Whatever made Robert marry her?"
"That is past speculating about! But she is the man's choice—such as it is. Doubtless he thinks her without a fault, but, as I told you before, the bit-by-bitness can soon change that opinion—a little mustard seed of suspicion or difference of any kind, can grow to a great tree. I'm telling you! Do not forget what I say. I am just distracted as yet with the situation. This world is a hard place."
"I think so too, mother," said Christina, "and it is small comfort to be told the next is probably worse."
"I have had lots of trouble in my life, girls, but the worst of all comes with what your father called 'the lad and lass business.' It was that drove your brother David beyond seas, and I have not heard a word from him since he went away one day in a passion. But this or that, mind you, I have always come out of every tribulation victorious—and there is now three of us—we shall be hard enough to beat."
"Theodora has a good many points in her favor," said Christina.
"Count them up, then; count them up! She is a beauty, a genius, an Englishwoman, a Methodist, a teacher of women, a writer of books, and no doubt she will try to set up the golden image of her manifold perfections in Traquair House—but which of us three will bow down before it? Tell me! Tell me that, Christina!"
"Not I, mother."
"Nor I," added Isabel.