What was the cause, it may be asked. What did he do or say—how did he demean himself so as to produce in her bosom a feeling of horror and disgust toward him that nothing could remove?
I cannot tell. He was a man of strong passions and no principles: that his after—perhaps his previous—life would evince. There is a touchstone for pure gold in the heart of an innocent and highminded woman that detects all baser metals: they are discovered in a moment: they cannot stand the test.
Now, whether his heart-cankering corruption, his want of faith, honesty, and truth, made themselves felt, and were pointed out by the index of that fine barometer, without any overt act at all—or whether he gave actual cause of offense, I do not know—none has ever known.
Suddenly, however, the gay, the apparently somewhat wayward girl, now between fifteen and sixteen, assumed a new character in her father's and mother's eyes. With a strange frank abruptness she told them she would take no more singing lessons of the Italian; but she added no explanation.
Lady Hastings was angry, and expostulated warmly; but the girl was firm and resolute. She heard her mother's argument, and answered in soft and humble tones that she would not,—could not learn to sing any longer—that she was very sorry to grieve or to offend her mother; but she had learned long enough, and would learn no more.
More angry than before, with the air of indignant pride in which weakness so often takes refuge, the mother quitted the room; and the father then, in a calmer spirit, inquired the cause of her resolution.
She blushed like the early morning sky; but there was a sort of bewildered look upon her face as she replied, "I know no cause—I can give no reason, my dear father; but the man is hateful to me. I will never see him again."
Her father sought for farther explanation, but he could obtain none. Guardini had not said anything nor done anything, she admitted, to give her offense; but yet she firmly refused to be his pupil any longer.
There are instincts in fine and delicate minds, which, by signs and indications intangible to coarser natures, discover in others thoughts and feelings, wishes and designs, discordant—repugnant to themselves. They are instincts, I say, not amenable to reason, escaping analysis, incapable of explanation—the warning voice of God in the heart, bidding them beware of evil.
Sir Philip Hastings was not a man to allow aught for such impulses—to conceive or understand them in the least. He had been accustomed to delude himself with reasons, some just, others very much the reverse, but he had never done a deed or entertained a thought for which he could not give some reason of convincing power to his own mind.