"You may not be aware of it," said Hammond, "but that sounds remarkably like a tract."
"Then I hope you'll all profit by it.—Horace, do you hear? If ever you drop a stitch, be warned." She looked up as she said it, and something in his face made her fancy that he had dropped a stitch of some kind.
When she was saying good-night to Percival, Sissy asked abruptly, in a low voice, "What is Miss Lisle's name?"
He answered, "Judith."
CHAPTER VII.
JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
Sissy, when she reached her room that night, drew up the blind and stood looking out at the park, which was flooded with moonlight. "It ought to be Percival's," she thought. "I should like Horace to have plenty of money, but the old house ought to be Percival's. He is so good: he screens Horace instead of thinking of himself. I do believe Horace is in some scrape now. And Aunt Middleton is always thinking about him, too: she won't let Uncle Thorne be just to Percival. Oh, it is a shame!—If he had Brackenhill perhaps he would marry Miss Lisle. I wonder if he is in love with her? He spoke so coolly, not as if he were the least bit angry, when Godfrey Hammond laughed at her. But he said she had a noble face.—What did it remind me of when he said 'Judith'?" Sissy was perplexed for a few moments, and then their talk on the terrace a month before flashed into her mind—"Jael, or Judith, or Charlotte Corday," and she remembered the very intonation with which Percival had repeated "Judith." "Ah!" said the girl half aloud, with a sudden intuition, "he was thinking of her when he talked of heroic women!—Why wasn't I born noble and heroic as well as others? Is it my fault if I can't bear people to be angry with me—if I always stop and think and hesitate, and then the moment is gone? I couldn't have driven the nail in, like Jael, for fear there should be just time for him to look up at me. I should have thrown the hammer down and died, I think. I wonder what made her able to do it—how she struck, and how she felt when the nail went crashing in? I wonder whether I could have done it if Sisera had hated Percival—if I knew he meant to kill him—if it had been Percival's life or his?"
Sissy proceeded to ponder the biblical narrative (with this slight variation), but she came to no satisfactory decision. She inclined to the opinion that Sisera would have woke up, somehow. She could not imagine what she could possibly feel like when the deed was done, except that she was certain she should be afraid ever to be alone with herself again for one moment as long as she lived.
So she went back to the original question: "I dare say Miss Lisle is brave and calm, and horribly strong-minded: why wasn't I born the same as she was? Perhaps Percival would have cared for me then. He did say even I might find something I could die for: he didn't think I was quite a coward. Ah! if I could only show him I wasn't!"