“The first time he mentioned you, it was as one of the reasons that he wished to take our dear Bessie to Avonmouth. He said there was a girl there of a strong spirit, independent and thorough-going, and thinking for herself. He said, ‘to be sure, she generally thinks wrong, but there’s a candour and simplicity about her that make her wildest blunders better than parrot commonplace,’ and he thought your reality might impress his sister. Even then I gathered what was coming.”
“And how wrong and foolish you must have thought it.”
“I hoped I might trust my boy’s judgment.”
“Indeed, you could not think it worse for him than I did; but I was ill and weak, and could not help letting Alick do what he would; but I have never understood it. I told him how unsettled my views were, and he did not seem to mind—”
“My dear, may I ask if this sense of being unsettled is with you still?”
“I don’t know! I had no power to read or think for a long time, and now, since I have been here, I hope it has not been hypocrisy, for going on in your way and his has been very sweet to me, and made me feel as I used when I was a young girl, with only an ugly dream between. I don’t like to look at it, and yet that dream was my real life that I made for myself.”
“Dear child, I have little doubt that Alick knew it would come to this.”
Rachel paused. “What, you and he think a woman’s doubts so vague and shallow as to be always mastered by a husband’s influence?”
Mr. Clare was embarrassed. If he had thought so he had not expected her to make the inference. He asked her if she could venture to look back on her dream so as to mention what had chiefly distressed her. He could not see her frowning effort at recollection, but after a pause, she said, “Things will seem to you like trifles, indeed, individual criticisms appear so to me; but the difficulty to my mind is that I don’t see these objections fairly grappled with. There is either denunciation or weak argument; but I can better recollect the impression on my own mind than what made it.”
“Yes, I know that feeling; but are you sure you have seen all the arguments?”