Melicent and Hester still lingered. Melicent remembered faintly her Uncle Robert's marriage, and the disagreeable feeling in the family at that time. It had left on her mind a prejudice against "that Polish girl," and a shade of disfavor toward her daughter. But she said nothing.
"It will be so disagreeable having a Catholic in the family!" Hester complained.
"Hester, listen to me!" her father said severely. "I want no bigotry nor petty persecutions in my family. Your Cousin Edith has as good a right to her religion as you have to yours; and if either should find herself disagreeably situated, it is she, for she is alone. Don't forget this; and don't let there be anything offensive said, or hinted, or looked. I mean to be consistent, and allow others the same freedom which I claim myself. Now, let me hear no more of this."
Hester took refuge in tears. It was her sole argument. She was one of those soft creatures who require to be petted, and have a talent for being abused. Possibly, too, she was a little jealous of this new member of the family.
"Melicent, will you lead away this weeping nymph, and dry her tears?" the father said impatiently. "Common sense is too robust for her constitution."
The sisters went up-stairs, and Owen followed them presently, and climbed to the cupola. Leaning on the window-sill there, he looked off over the country. The horizon was a ring of low blue hills, with a grand amethyst glittering to tell where the sea lay. Through the centre of this vast circle glimmered the river, silver, and gold, and steel-blue, and the white houses of the town lay like a heap of lilies scattered on its banks. Everywhere else was forest.
Shadows of varying thought swept over the young man's face as he looked off, and drew freer breath from the distance. "Henceforth my shield must bear a martlet," he muttered. "But whither shall I fly?"
That was the problem he was studying. He had come to this place only to see his family settled, and collect his own thoughts after their sudden fall from prosperity; then he would go out into the world, and work his own way. It was not pleasant, the change from that life of noble leisure and lofty work which he had planned, to one where compulsory labor for mere bread must occupy the greater part of his time; but it was inevitable. And as he looked abroad now, and breathed the fresh air that came frolicking out of the northwest, and remembered how wide the world is and how many veins in it are unwrought, his young courage rose, and the plans he had been building up for that year crumbled and ceased to excite his regret.
Only a few months before their change of circumstances, his mother had been won to consent that he might visit Asia. He had meant to go north, south, east, and west, in that shabby, glorious old land, make himself for the nonce Tartar, Chinese, Indian, Persian, what not, and get a look at creation through the eyes of each. This young man's sympathies were by no means narrow. He had never been able to believe that God smiles with peculiar fondness on any particular continent, island, peninsula, or part of either, and is but a stepfather to the rest of the world. He was born with a hatred of barriers. He sympathized with Swift, who "hated all nations, professions, and communities, and gave all his love to individuals." Or, better than Swift, he had at least a theoretical love for mankind unfenced. He did not have to learn to love, that came naturally to him; he had to learn to hate. But he was a good hater. Take him all in all, Carl Owen Yorke was at twenty-one a noble, generous youth, of good mind and unstained reputation; and it was no proof of excessive vanity in him that he believed himself capable of taking any position he might strive for.
"My dear Minerva tells me that I have in me some of the elements of failure," he said. "I wonder what they are?"