Mrs. Gray hesitated, and bent her eyes upon the fire. "Good—yes he has been good to us; as for liking him I ought to. I know how ungrateful it is, but somehow, Jacob, I'll own it to you, I never did like Mr. Leicester with my whole heart, I'm ashamed to look you in the face and say this, but it's the living truth: perhaps it was his education, or something."
"No, Sarah, it was your heart, your own upright heart, that stirred within you. I have felt it a thousand times, struggled against it, been ashamed of it, but an honest heart is always right. When it shrinks and grows cold at the approach of a stranger, depend on it, that stranger has some thing wrong about him. Never grieve or blush for this heart warning. It is only the honest who feel it. Vile things do not tremble as they touch each other."
"Why, Jacob, Jacob, you do not mean to say that it was right for me to dislike Mr. Leicester—to dread his coming—to feel sometimes as if I wanted to snatch Robert from his side and run off with him! I'm sure it has been a great trouble to me, and I've prayed and prayed not to be so ungrateful. Now you speak as if it was right all the time; but you don't know all; you will blame me as I blame myself after I tell you it was through Mr. Leicester that Robert got his situation with one of the richest and greatest merchants in New York, and that he was paid a salary from the first, though hundreds and hundreds of rich men's sons would have jumped at the place without pay; now, Jacob, I'm sure you'll think me an ungrateful creature."
"Ungrateful!" repeated Jacob with emphasis, "but no matter now; the time has gone by when it would do good to talk all this over. But tell me, Sarah, what studies did he seem most earnest that Robert should understand? What books did they read together? What was the general discourse?"
"I'm sure it's impossible for me to tell; they read all sorts of books, some of 'em are on the swing shelf—you can look at 'em for yourself."
Jacob arose, and taking up a light, examined the books pointed out to him, while his sister stood by, gazing alternately upon his face and the volumes, as if some new and vague fear had all at once possessed her.
There was nothing in the volumes which Jacob beheld to excite apprehension, even in the most rigid moralist. Some of the books were elementary; the rest purely classical; a few were in French, but they bore no taint of the loose morals or vicious philosophy which has rendered the modern literature of France the shame of genius.
Jacob drew a deep breath, and replacing the light on the mantel-piece, sat down. His feelings and suspicions were not in the least changed, but the inspection of those books had baffled him. Mrs. Gray sat watching him with great anxiety.
"There is nothing wrong in the books, is there?" she said, at length.
"No!" was the absent reply.