"I am so glad to see you, sister. I have been very unhappy without your company. You know I have no friend but you. I am sorry I spoke rudely to you. Forgive me!"
"Christina, we are the world to each other. No one else seems to care anything about us, and it is foolish to quarrel."
"It was my fault, Isabel. I ought to have known you were not wearing my collar intentionally."
"Why should I? I have plenty of collars of my own. But we will not go into explanations. It is better to agree to forget the circumstance."
"Life is so lonely without you, and our little chats with each other are the only pleasure I have. I wonder if there is, in all Glasgow, a house so dull as this house is."
"It will soon be busy and gay enough. Things are going to be very different in Traquair House. They may not effect our lives much – it is too late for that, Christina – but we shall have the fun of watching the rows there are sure to be with mother. Bring your chair near to me. I have a great secret to tell you."
As they sat down together it was impossible to avoid noticing how much they resembled each other personally. Nature had intended both of them to be beautiful, but their obtuse, grieved faces had been marred in early years by the disappointments, sorrows, and tragic mistakes of the children of long ago; and later by their pathetic acquiescence in their ill-assorted fates, and the cruel certainty of youth gone forever, without the knowledge of youth's delights. Isabel was now thirty-three years old, and Christina twenty-eight, and on their dark faces, and in their sombre, black eyes, there was a resentful gloom; the shadow of lives that felt themselves to be blighted beyond the power of any good fortune to redeem.
The two sisters had lost hope early, and for this weakness they were partly excusable, since they had the most crushing and unsympathetic of mothers. Mrs. Campbell was a woman of iron constitution, iron nerves, and principles of steel. She was never sick, and she was angry if her children were sick; she met every trouble with fight, she was contemptuous to those who wept; she was never weary, but she made life a burden to all under her sway.
In another way their father had been still more unfortunate to them. Intensely vain and arrogant, he had inherited a large business which he had not had the ability or the intelligence to manage. When he had nearly ruined it, the generosity of a distant relative – jealous for the honor of the name – came to the rescue; but he placed over all other authority a manager who knew what he was doing, and who was amenable to advice. Then Traquair Campbell, unwilling to acknowledge any superior, became a semi-invalid; and retired to a seclusion which had no other duty than the indulgence of his every whim and desire, making his two daughters the handmaids of his idle, self-centred hours. Year after year this slavery continued, and their youth, beauty, and education, their hopes, pleasures, and even their friends, were all demanded in sacrifice to that dreadful incarnation of Self, who made filial duty his claim on them. It was scarcely two years since they had been emancipated by his death, and the terror of the past and the shadow of it was yet over them.
Such treatment would have soured even good dispositions, but the nature of both these girls was as awry by inheritance, as their destiny in regard to parental influence and environment had been tragically unfortunate. Only the loftiest or the sweetest of spirits could have dominated the evil influences by which they were surrounded, and turned them into healthy and happy ones. And neither Isabel nor Christina knew the uplifting of a lofty ideal, nor yet the gentle power of the soft word and the loving smile.
Sitting close together and moved by the same feelings, their physical resemblance was remarkable. As before said, Nature had intended them to be beautiful. Their features were regular, their hair abundant, their eyes dark and well formed, their figures tall and slender, but they lacked those small accessories to beauty without which it appears crude and undeveloped. Their faces were dull and uninteresting for want of that interior light of the soul and intellect without which "the human face divine" is not divine – is indeed only flesh and blood. Their abundant hair was badly cared for, and not becomingly arranged; their figures, in spite of tight lacing, badly managed and ungracefully clothed; their eyes, though dark and long-lashed, carried no illumination and were only expressive of evil or bitter emotions; they knew not either the languors or the sweet lights of love or pity. Isabel and Christina had slipped about sick rooms too much; and they had been too little in the busy world to estimate themselves by comparison with others, and so find out their deficiencies.
This morning their likeness to each other was accentuated by the fact that they were dressed exactly alike in dark brown merino, with a narrow band of white linen round their throats. Each had fastened the linen band with a gold brooch of the same pattern, and both wore a small Swiss watch pinned on her plain, tight waist.
Isabel reclined in her chair, and as she knew all there was to know at present, a faint smile of satisfaction was on her face. Christina sat upright, with an almost childish expression of expectation.
"What do you know, Isabel?" she asked impatiently. "How, or why, are things going to be different in Traquair House?"
"Because there is to be a marriage in the family."
"A marriage! Is it mother? Old lawyer Galt has been very attentive lately."
"No, it is not mother."
"Then it is Robert?"
Isabel nodded assent.
Christina's eyes filled with a dull, angry glow, and there were tears in her voice, as she cried:
"If that is so, Isabel, I will leave Traquair House. I will not live with Jane Dalkeith. She is worse than mother. She would count every mouthful we ate, and make remarks as nasty as herself."
"Exactly. That would be Jane's way; but I am led to believe Robert will never marry Jane Dalkeith."
"Who then is he going to marry? I never heard of Robert paying attention to any girl."
"I have found out the person he is paying attention to."
"Who is it, Isabel? Tell me. I will never mention the circumstance."
"Her name is Theodora."
"What a queer name – Miss Theodora. Do you know, it sounds like a Christian name; it surely can not be a surname."
"You are right. I do not know her surname."
"How did you find it out – I mean Robert's love affair?"
Isabel described the discovery of the velvet-bound Bible while Christina listened with greedy interest. "You know, Christina," she added, "that a young man on his engagement always gives the girl a Bible."
"Yes, I know; even servant girls get a Bible when they are engaged. Our Maggie and Kitty did; they showed them to me. Do the men swear their love and promises on them?"
"I should not wonder. If so, a great many are soon forsworn!"
"Is that all you know, Isabel?"
"Four times this week she has written to Robert. I saw the letters in the mail."
"Love letters, I suppose?"
"No doubt of it."
"How immodest! Do you know where she lives?"
"At a town called Kendal."
"I never heard of the place. Is it near Motherwell? Robert often goes to Motherwell."
"It is in England."
"Oh, Isabel, you frighten me! An Englishwoman! Whatever will mother say? How could Robert think of such a dreadful thing! What shall we do?"
"I see no occasion for us either to say or to do. There will be some grand set-tos between mother and Robert. We may get some amusement out of them."
"Mother will insist on Robert giving up the Englishwoman. She will make him do it."
"I do not think she will be able. Mind what I say."
"Robert has been under mother all