"Poor little thing! I think there must be something sad about the story of her early life," he said; "for she so evidently shrinks from all allusion to it. It's the old story, I suppose,—an unkind step-mother and an uncomfortable home. Under these circumstances, I was very glad to see her married to a well-disposed, honest-hearted young man."
"She was very fond of Mr. Gilbert, I suppose,—very much in love with him?" said Roland, after a little pause.
"In love with him! not a bit of it. She was very fond of him, I dare say—not in the sentimental manner in which she discourses about her poets and her heroes; but she has every reason to be fond of him as a faithful protector and a good friend."
Mr. Raymond looked up suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon the face of his young kinsman. But it was dusk by this time; and in the dim light of the room Charles Raymond could not see the expression of Roland's face; he could only see the attitude of his head, which drooped a little forward, supported by his hand.
"I lent my voice to the bringing about of Isabel Gilbert's marriage," Mr. Raymond said, slowly; "and God grant that no man may ever be base enough or cruel enough to interpose himself between these two!"
"Amen!" answered Roland Lansdell, in a deep solemn voice.
And then he walked to the window and looked out into the twilit garden, above which the faint summer moon had newly arisen.
"If I could have believed in that splendid fable of a future life, that grand compensating balance for all the sorrows and mistakes of this lower world, what a good man I might have been!" he thought, as he stood there looking out, with his arm resting upon the broad wooden sash, and his head upon his arm.