Richard Crawford started, as he lay reclining upon the sofa. He was decidedly better than he had been a week before, and kept his little room less closely, though he was fearfully weak and the racking pain had not entirely left his system. "You never liked Egbert," he said.
"No," said John, "I never liked him, a bit more than Dean Swift liked Doctor Fell, though perhaps I could not tell why, any better than the Dean."
"No, I suppose not," said Richard, musingly. And here the conversation dropped, on that point. Whatever may have been Richard Crawford's suspicions of his cousin, forced on him by circumstances and by the young girl who had so strangely volunteered to disenchant him—he had no intention of communicating them even to his brother.
If there was a mixed feeling in the meeting of the brothers, there was one quite as complicated in that of Isabel Crawford and Marion Hobart—two total strangers so unexpectedly flung together. Bell Crawford was better fitted to receive and care for the orphan girl, than she would have been a month before, when the mysterious turning-point of her existence had not been reached; and there had been no time since she had become the mistress of her brother's mansion, when she would not have used every exertion to make one comfortable and happy who had been so strangely recommended to her sympathy. What she would before have lacked, was discipline and thoughtfulness. These she had attained to some degree, in a manner which she could not much more comprehend than those who surrounded her. But it was impossible that she could be able at once to supply the double want of sister and mother to one who had been so differently nurtured and educated as Marion Hobart; and the very desire to be even kinder than she would have cared to be to one who had more claims upon her, necessarily placed her in embarrassment which was very likely to produce the opposite effect. The young Virginian girl could not do otherwise than receive those attentions with gratitude, and yet her very desire not to be obtrusive and not to seem to demand more attention than was necessary, placed her in an equally anomalous position. The two girls consequently became much less intimately acquainted within the first few days, than they might have done if thrown together under different auspices.
Marion Hobart was, as her conversation and conduct on the night of her grandfather's death so plainly indicated, a most singular person, and one who might have been studied for years without being fully understood. She talked but little, and yet her silence seemed to be more the result of having nothing to say and no sympathy with the ordinary topics of conversation, than from dislike or inability to converse. When she did speak, the same childlike curtness and immobility were observable, that had been shown by the couch of her dying relative. She seemed to be repeating set words, that did not affect her heart or make any change in the expression of her face; even though she may have been deeply moved in reality. She received kindnesses with thankfulness, and yet that thankfulness was generally too set and formal in its phrase to create the impression of gushing warm from the heart, and to give that exquisite pleasure that a simple "Thank you!" will often convey when it seems to leap out unbidden.
Of course in the double disaster of the fire and the death, the poor girl found herself almost entirely unprovided with clothes. Isabel, with thoughtful care, the next day after her arrival, spoke of making arrangements for procuring the services of a dressmaker at once.
"Yes, thank you, I have no clothes. I shall want some," answered the young girl.
"Excuse my touching upon your grief," said Bell, "but I suppose that you will wish black? You will wear mourning?"
"No, if you please," was the reply. "My family never wear mourning. My grandmother never did. I have been told so. I do not remember my grandmother. I do not know why we never wear mourning. But if you please, I wish to do as grandmother did."
Here was the same peculiarity again, that had been shown at the bedside of the dying grandfather—the grandmother spoken of, but no mention of a mother. Bell Crawford noticed the fact, as her brother had not done; but she could no more have asked that strange girl for an explanation, and risked the possible opening of some family wound, than she could have gone to the stake.