CHAPTER I
A PROSPECTIVE MOTHER-IN-LAW

As it was Saturday morning, Mrs. Traquair Campbell was examining her weekly accounts and clearing off her week's correspondence; for she found it necessary to her enjoyment of the Sabbath Day that her mind should be free from all worldly obligations. This was one of the inviolable laws of Traquair House, enunciated so frequently and so positively by its mistress, that it was seldom violated in any way.

It was therefore with fear and uncertainty that Miss Campbell ventured to break this rule, and to open softly the door of her mother's room. No notice was taken of the intruder for a few moments, but her presence proving disastrous to the total of a line of figures which Mrs. Campbell was adding, she looked up with visible annoyance and asked:

"What do you want, Isabel? You are disturbing me very much, and you know it."

"I beg pardon, mother, but I think the occasion will excuse me."

"What is the occasion?"

"There is something in my brother's room that I feel sure you ought to see."

"Could you not have waited until I had finished my work here?"

"No, mother. It is Saturday, and Robert may be home by an early train. I think he will, for he is apparently going to England."

"Going to England, so near the Sabbath? Impossible! What set your thoughts on that track?"

"His valise is packed, and directed to Sheffield; but I think he will stop at a town called Kendal. He may go to Sheffield afterwards, of course."

"Kendal! Where is Kendal? I never heard of the place. What do you know about it?"

"Nothing at all. But in going over the mail, I noticed that four letters with the Kendal post-office stamp came to Robert this week. They were all addressed in the same handwriting – a woman's."

"Isabel Campbell!"

"It is the truth, mother."

"Why did you not name this singular circumstance before?"

"It was not my affair. Robert would likely have been angry at my noticing his letters. I have no right to interfere in his life. You have – if it seems best to do so."

"Have you told me all?"

"No, mother."

"What else?"

"There is on his dressing table, loosely folded in tissue paper, an exquisite Bible."

"Very good. Robert cannot have The Word too exquisitely bound."

"I do not think Robert intends this copy of the Word for his own use. No, indeed!"

"Why should you think different?"

"It is bound in purple velvet. The corner pieces are of gold, and a little gold plate on the cover has engraved upon it the word Theodora. Can you imagine Robert Traquair Campbell using a Bible like that? It would be remarked by every one in the church. I am sure of it."

Mrs. Campbell had dropped her pencil and had quite forgotten her accounts and letters. Her hard, handsome face was flushed with anger, her tawny-colored eyes full of calculating mischief, as she demanded with scornful passion:

"What is your opinion, Isabel?"

"I can only have one opinion, mother. You know on what occasion a young man gives such a Bible. I am compelled to believe that Robert is engaged to marry some woman called Theodora, who lives probably at Kendal."

"He can not! He shall not! He must marry Jane Dalkeith, – Jane, and no other woman. I will not permit him to bring a stranger here, and an Englishwoman is out of all consideration. Theodora, indeed! Theodora!" and she flung the three words from her with a scorn no language could transcribe.

"It is not a Scotch name, mother. I never knew any one called Theodora."

"Scotch? the idea! Does it sound like Scotch? No, not a letter of it. There were never any Theodoras among the Traquairs, or the Campbells, and I will not have any. Robert will find that out very quickly. Why, Isabel, Honor is before Love, and Honor compels Robert to marry Jane Dalkeith. Her father saved Robert's father from utter ruin, and I believe Jane holds some claim yet upon the Campbell furnaces. It has always been understood that Robert and Jane would marry, and I am sure the poor, dear girl loves Robert."

"I do not believe, mother, that Jane could love any one but herself; and I feel sure that if the Campbells owed her money, she would have collected it long ago. Why do you not ask Robert about the money? He will know if anything is owing."

"Because Scotch men resent women asking questions about their business. They will not answer them truly; often they will not answer them at all."

"Ask Jane Dalkeith herself."

"Indeed, I will not. When you are as old as I am, you will have learned to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Will you go and look at the Bible?"

"It is not likely I will be so foolish. Surely you do not require to be told that Robert left it there for that purpose. He has his defence ready on the supposition that I will ask him about this Theodora. On the contrary, he shall bring the whole tale to me, beginning and end, and I shall make the telling of it as difficult and disagreeable as possible."

"I am afraid I have interfered with your Saturday's duties, mother; but I thought you ought to know."

"As mother and mistress I ought to know all that concerns either the family or Traquair House. I will now finish my examinations and correspondence. And Isabel, when Robert comes home, ask him no questions, and give him no hint as to what has been discovered. I am very angry at him. He ought to have told me about the woman at the very beginning of the affair; and I should have put a stop to it at once. It might have been more easily managed then than it will be now."

"Can you put a stop to it at all, mother?"

"Can I put a stop to it?" she cried scornfully. "I can, and I will!"

"Robert is a very determined man."

"And I am a very positive woman. At the last and the long, in any dispute, the woman wins."

"Sometimes the man wins."

"Nonsense! If he does win now and then, it is always a barren victory. He loses more than he gains."

"I don't wish to discourage you, mother, but Robert is gey stubborn, and I feel sure that in this case he will take his own way, and no other person's way."

"I desire you not to contradict me, Isabel." She turned to her papers, lifted her pencil, and to all appearance was entirely occupied by her bills and letters. Isabel gave her one strange, inexplicable look ere she left the room, shutting the door this time without regard to noise and with something very like temper.

In the corridor she hesitated, standing with one foot ready to descend the stairs, but urged by a variety of feelings to take the upward flight which led to her own and her sister Christina's rooms. At present she was "out" with Christina, and they had not spoken to each other, when alone, for three days. But now the pleasure of having something new and unusual to tell, the desire to talk it over, and perhaps also a modest little wish to be friends with her sister, who was her chief confidant and ally, induced her to seek Christina in her room.

She knocked gently at the door, and Christina said in an imperative voice, "Come in." She thought it was one of the maids, and Christina wasted no politeness on any one, unless manifestly to her own interest or pleasure. But Isabel understood the curt permission was not intended for her, and, opening the door, went into the room. Christina, who was reading, lifted her eyes and then dropped them again to the book. For she was amazed at her sister's visit, and knew not what to say, priority of birth being in English and Scotch families of some consequence. In their numerous disagreements Christina had never expected Isabel to make the first advances towards reconciliation. Almost without exception she had been the one to apologize, and she had been thinking about ending their present trouble when Isabel visited her.

For a few minutes she was undecided, but as Isabel took a comfortable chair and was evidently going to remain, Christina realized that her elder sister had made a silent advance, and that she was expected to speak first. So she laid down her book, and pushing a stool under Isabel's feet, said in a fretful, worried voice:

"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?"