“This old mysterious story must have a solution,” he had said; “but there, I will not revert to it!” Then they parted, and thinking upon it all more deeply than ever, Brace’s musings were interrupted as we have seen by the coming of the man upon whom his thoughts had turned.
Tangled.
Two days—four days, and a week passed, and Brace did not see Isa. He sought all her favourite rides, and waited about for hours, but she did not come. He felt sure that something was wrong, and wondered again and again whether that something was connected with the meeting with Lord Maudlaine. As the days passed, Brace’s mind was incessantly tortured by imaginings of garbled accounts, of insidious attempts to poison the ear of Isa, and at length his anxiety became almost unbearable. If he had made some arrangement by which he might have sent a letter, he would not have cared, but, under the circumstances, he felt that to write would only be to insure the return of his note, and he dared not send.
A fortnight had passed and no news, when Brace Norton’s heart leaped as, at breakfast, Captain Norton unlocked the letter-bag, and passed over a couple of letters to his son, one of which was in a handwriting he had never before seen, but whose authoress his heart told him, as, unable to control himself, he rose from the table and sought his room.
The note was but short, and contained exactly what he had anticipated, but none the less it made him sink on a chair by his dressing-table, cover his face with his hands, and groan in the bitterness of his heart.
It was precisely as he had conjectured. Sir Murray had angrily commanded his daughter to refrain from meeting the reader any more. He had told her that she must learn to school her heart, for such a union, for family reasons, was absolutely impossible; and, besides, he had passed his word that she should be the wife of Lord Maudlaine, who had, during the past fortnight, been most assiduous in his attentions, driving her, Isa said, to taking refuge in her own room for hours every day. She told him that they must meet no more; that she was very unhappy; but that Jane, the housekeeper, her old nurse, had spoken comforting words to her, telling her that perhaps, after all, the old troubles between the two houses might be swept away.
“I would not, on any account, my child, advise you against your papa’s wishes,” Jane had said; “but you must not marry Lord Maudlaine while your poor little heart is another’s. I have seen too much misery amongst those you know for that to take place. You must wait, my child—you must wait—wait.”
The letter concluded:—
“But how can I wait, when papa insists? Do not be angry with me, for I am very, very unhappy, and very weak. I am no heroine of romance, and cannot see how all this will end; but I pray hourly for your happiness, for that will be the happiness of Isa Gernon.”