“I can see that very plain,” said Fanny; “but if respectable professional people are not good enough for him, he will have only himself to thank if he gets himself looked down upon by empty-headed swells.”
Meanwhile, Lydia, on her return to the castle after a long drive round the country, had attempted to overcome an attack of restlessness by setting to work on the biography of her father. With a view to preparing a chapter on his taste in literature she had lately been examining his favorite books for marked passages. She now resumed this search, not setting methodically to work, but standing perched on the library ladder, taking down volume after volume, and occasionally dipping into the contents for a few pages or so. At this desultory work the time passed as imperceptibly as the shadows lengthened. The last book she examined was a volume of poems. There were no marks in it; but it opened at a page which had evidently lain open often before. The first words Lydia saw were these:
“What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do; Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.”
Lydia hastily stepped down from the ladder, and recoiled until she reached a chair, where she sat and read and reread these lines. The failing light roused her to action. She replaced the book on the shelf, and said, as she went to the writing-table, “If such a doubt as that haunted my father it will haunt me, unless I settle what is to be my heart’s business now and forever. If it be possible for a child of mine to escape this curse of autovivisection, it must inherit its immunity from its father, and not from me—from the man of emotion who never thinks, and not from the woman of introspection, who cannot help thinking. Be it so.”
CHAPTER XIV
Before many days had elapsed a letter came for Cashel as he sat taking tea with the Skene family. When he saw the handwriting, a deep red color mounted to his temples.
“Oh, Lor’!” said Miss Skene, who sat next him. “Let’s read it.”
“Go to the dickens,” cried Cashel, hastily baffling her as she snatched at it.
“Don’t worrit him, Fan,” said Mrs. Skene, tenderly.