“I have heard enough!” said Miss Carmichael: “I will speak to my father at once.”
The next day Donal received a note to the following effect:—
“Sir, in consequence of what I felt bound to report to my father of the conversation we had yesterday, he desires that you will call upon him at your earliest convenience. He is generally at home from three to five. Yours truly, Sophia Agnes Carmichael.”
To this Donal immediately replied:—
“Madam, notwithstanding the introduction I brought him from another clergyman, your father declined my acquaintance, passing me afterwards as one unknown to him. From this fact, and from the nature of the report which your behaviour to me yesterday justifies me in supposing you must have carried to him, I can hardly mistake his object in wishing to see me. I will attend the call of no man to defend my opinions; your father’s I have heard almost every Sunday since I came to the castle, and have been from childhood familiar with them. Yours truly, Donal Grant.”
Not a word more came to him from either of them. When they happened to meet, Miss Carmichael took no more notice of him than her father.
But she impressed it upon the mind of her friend that, if unable to procure his dismission, she ought at least to do what she could to protect her cousin from the awful consequences of such false teaching: if she was present, he would not say such things as he would in her absence, for it was plain he was under restraint with her! She might even have some influence with him if she would but take courage to show him where he was wrong! Or she might find things such that her uncle must see the necessity of turning him away; as the place belonged to her, he would never go dead against her! She did not see that that was just the thing to fetter the action of a delicate-minded girl.
Continually haunted, however, with the feeling that she ought to do something, lady Arctura felt as if she dared not absent herself from the lesson, however disagreeable it might prove: that much she could do! Upon the next occasion, therefore, she appeared in the schoolroom at the hour appointed, and with a cold bow took the chair Donal placed for her.
“Now, Davie,” said Donal, “what have you done since our last lesson?”
Davie stared.