“Zerah! come and look here. There is rope in the liquor’it is turning sour.”
Kate looked fixedly at her uncle’s face. The child was in distress and doubt. Was her father alive, or had he died a death of the worst description? Was he away on his business, carrying out some risky speculation, or did his bones lie resolved to ash in the great cinder-heap that had smouldered on so long, and was but just extinct?
She had not met with anything in her uncle’s character which would justify her in attributing to him so deliberate and desperate a crime as firing his own warehouse, and sacrificing, intentionally or accidentally, the life of his brother-in-law; and yet his wife, who ought to know him best, had arrived at the worst conclusion, and though she said nothing, Kate saw by her manner that she was for ever estranged from her husband, and regarded him as guilty of the crime in its worst form.
Zerah had retained Kitty in her room, and had more than once said to her that after the return of Pasco she would make him occupy Kate’s old attic; she would no longer treat Pasco other than as a stranger. Her reception of him now showed repugnance and restraint; the shrinking of an upright nature from one tainted with dishonesty, and exhibiting restraint from saying all that was felt.
Kate looked on her uncle with his self-satisfied expression, holding the glass between him and the light with a steady hand, concerning his mind about the ropiness of the cider, and in her simple mind, ignorant of evil, direct, with no trickiness or dissimulation in it, she felt vast relief. She could not believe that Pasco had done wrong, nor that he had any misgivings as to the well-being of her father.
She drew a long sigh, and passed her hand across her brow, as though to brush away the cloud that had hung over it and darkened all her thoughts.
In the new confidence established between herself and her aunt, Kate had whispered to her that she was engaged to Walter Bramber, but the news seemed to make as little impression on Zerah as it had on Pasco, and for the same reason, that each mind was engrossed in other more immediately interesting matters. The girl submitted with that resignation which characterised her. She made little account of herself, and did not suppose that what concerned her could excite lively emotions in the hearts of her uncle and aunt. Even Mr. Puddicombe had shown more sympathy and pleasure. But then, Kate could make allowance for the preoccupation of her aunt’s mind consequent on the fire.
Kate now timidly approached her uncle, keeping her eyes riveted on his face, and, standing on the other side of the little round table on which was his jug, she asked’
“Are you quite sure my dear father is all right?”
Pasco looked sharply at her.