Isabel gazed from one stern, sad-faced woman to the other, and her lips quivered. She turned and clung to Barney's arm.
"Oh, take me away! take me away! I want to go back!" she cried.
Miss Pengarvon turned away in high displeasure, and Barney led the tearful child from the room.
That first night, and many nights afterwards, Isabel cried herself to sleep in the huge four-poster, with its funereal draperies, in which they put her to bed. All her life she had been used to being petted and made much of, and had hardly known what it was to be alone. But now she was left by herself in a great ghostly room from six o'clock at night till seven next morning. She felt herself to be quite an unconsidered trifle in that huge ocean of bed. She was morally sure that those grim portraits on the walls--dark, frowning gentlemen in perukes and embroidered clothes, and stately ladies in hoops and high-heeled shoes--whispered to each other about her, Isabel Pengarvon; and that after the candle was taken away they stepped down out of their frames, and hastened to join the other ghosts in the long gallery, where they danced and flirted and took snuff with each other, till some watchful cock on a faraway farm sounded the warning note which sent them back to their faded frames, there to attitudinize in silent mockery till another midnight should come round.
But these first fears gradually wore themselves away, and in time Isabel and the portraits became great friends. She would sit up in bed on moonlight nights, and talk to them by the hour together. She invented private histories for many of them--strings of adventures, such as only a child's brain could have imagined. Like other people, she had her favorites. Among such were "my Lady Bluesash" and "Miss Prettyshoes," "Mr. Longcurls" and "Captain Finelace," all people of quality, who were so good-natured as to have no secrets from Isabel.
With that marvellous adaptability which all children possess in a greater or lesser degree, Isabel gradually learned to look upon Broome as her home, and to have few cares or interests that were not bounded by its four grey walls. She lighted up the solitary old house like a ray of sunshine that warms and brightens at the same time. On Sundays she went with her sisters to church, and was shut up with them in the great oaken pew, with its closely-drawn curtains, where the preacher's voice came to her as the voice of one that crieth in the wilderness, he himself being altogether unseen, and from whence nothing was visible to her wandering eyes save a portion of the groined roof and two hideous gargoyles, whose staring eyes seemed to watch her every movement.
When Isabel was fourteen years old she was sent to a school in Nottingham to complete her education. Since her arrival at Broome her only teacher had been Miss Letitia, who, in their long hours together over their lessons, had, in her own cold, formal way, grown to like the bright-eyed, high-spirited girl far better than at one time she believed it possible she ever should do. Isabel was away for three years; at seventeen she came home "finished."
She was quite a young lady by this time--tall, slender, and with all the traditional beauty of her race. She was brimming over with mischief and high spirits, and she looked forward with dread to the dreary, uneventful life before her, with no company save that of her two middle-aged sisters--for Miss Pengarvon was now forty years old, Miss Letitia only two years younger--and to being buried alive, as it were, in that grim old house among the Derbyshire hills. Her life at school had served to show her a little of the world, from which she now felt as if she were about to be shut out forever--just enough, in fact, to make its attractions, known and unknown, all the more alluring to her vivid imagination. She had seen the Nottingham shops, gay with the manifold wares dear to a girl's heart; she had heard the garrison band play delicious waltzes that thrilled her with emotions unknown before, and more than one audacious young officer had turned to look and look again, as she was pacing demurely to church with her school-fellows. She had devoured all the love stories that had been smuggled into the school, and she had heard other girls talking about sweethearts and possible husbands, and she could not help wondering whether anyone would ever fall in love with her. Isabel did what few girls do--she cried bitter tears when the time came for her to bid good-bye to school for ever.
Two year passed without change. Her life of repression and isolation became at times a burden almost too heavy to be borne. Her nature was affectionate, but impulsive; she was warm-hearted, but with something wayward in her disposition, which, under happier circumstances, would doubtless have found a vent in high spirits and innocent fun. The end of the matter was that one morning Isabel was missing. She left behind her a note addressed to Miss Pengarvon, in which she stated that she was about to be married to some one who loved her very dearly, and that she would write further particulars in a few days. For some time past, a young gentleman, name unknown, had been stopping at the King's Arms Hotel, Stavering, ostensibly for fishing and sketching purposes; but as he and Isabel had been seen together more than once, pacing the sheltered walks by the river, and as he disappeared at the same time, there could be little doubt that they had gone away together. After reading the letter, Miss Pengarvon threw it into the fire. Then she caused all Isabel's clothes to be burnt--not that the poor girl had had anything beyond a very meagre wardrobe--and locked the door of the room which had been hers and took away the key.
"She has disgraced the name she bears. Let us never speak of her again," she said in her bitterest tones to Miss Letitia. The latter was crying quietly to herself. Miss Pengarvon regarded her with silent scorn.