"Me! Me go with you! Not while I have one of my five senses left me."

"I shall surely go some day. I might have been travelling ere now, but I disliked to leave you alone, after this trouble about Dora."

"There is no trouble about Dora, none at all. The running away o' the creature is a great satisfaction to me. I hate both her and her child."

"Robert is breaking his heart about them."

"And neglecting his business, and spending more money than he is making, looking for them. I might break my heart, too, but thanks be! I have more sense. Did I tell you the Crawford girls are coming to stay a week or two? I thought they would be a bit company to you. I suppose they can have the room next yours."

"Christina's room! Oh, mother, I wish you would put them somewhere else.

You have a spare room."

"It is o'er near my own room. And they are apt to come home at night full o' chat and giggle, and get me wakened up and maybe put by all sleep for that night. What is wrong with the room next yours?"

"I don't like any one using Christina's room--and they will keep me awake."

"n.o.body takes the least thought for my comfort."

"Why did you ask the Crawfords? You know Robert hates them."

"Robert is forgetting how to behave decently. He will at least have to be civil to the Crawfords, and that is a thing he has ceased to be either to you or me."

"Robert and I understand each other. He gives me a look, and I give him one. We do not require to speak."

"I wonder how I ever came to breed such unfeeling, unsocial children. If I get 'yes' or 'no' from your brother now, it is the whole of his conversation; and as for yourself, Isabel, you are at that wearisome reading or writing the livelong day. I'll need the Crawfords, or some one, to talk to me, or I'll forget how to speak. Now where will I sleep them?"

"I suppose in poor Christina's room."

"Poor Christina! Yes, indeed! I have no manner o' doubt it is 'poor Christina' by this time."

"Mother! mother! do not spae sorrow to your own child. I can't bear it.

I think she is very happy indeed. If she was not, she would have sent me word. It is poor Isabel, and it is happy Christina."

"Your way be it."

The next day the Crawfords came, and were installed in Christina's room.

Mrs. Campbell was in one of her gayest moods, and she said to Isabel: "I am not going to live in a Trappist monastery, because Robert is too sulky to open his mouth to me. I'll be glad to hear the girls clacking and chattering, and whiles laughing a bit. G.o.d knows, we need not make life any gloomier than it is."

For two or three days, the Crawfords had the run of the house. Robert went away, "on another wild goose chase" his mother said, just before they arrived; and his mother's words were evidently true, for he came home with every sign of disappointment about him. He looked so unhappy, that Isabel, meeting him in the hall, said: "I am sorry, brother, very sorry."

"I know you are," he answered. "It was a false hope--nothing in it."

"I would stop looking."

"You are right. I will give it up."

He went into the dining-room with Isabel, said good-evening to his mother, and bowed civilly to her guests. The dinner proceeded in a polite, noiseless manner, until the end of the second course. Then Robert lifted his eyes, and they fell upon Jean Crawford's hand. The next moment he had risen and was at her side.

"Give me the ring upon your right hand," he said in a voice that held as much pa.s.sion as a voice could hold and be intelligible.

"Why, Cousin Robert!"

"I want that ring!"

"Aunt Margaret said----"

"Give me the ring. It is not yours. How dare you wear it?"

"I was bringing it back! Oh, Aunt Margaret!"

"Robert, I am ashamed of you!"

"Mother, I want Theodora's ring--the ring stolen from my wife years ago.

I must have it--I must, I must!"

"Don't cry, Jean. Give him his ring. I'll give you a far handsomer one."

Then the woman threw it down on the table, and Robert lifted it and left the room.

Isabel sat until the tearful, protesting meal was over, and then she did the most remarkable thing--she went to her brother. He was sitting looking at the ring, recalling its history. He remembered going into Kendal one Sat.u.r.day night, just after its receipt, and memory showed him again Theodora's delight and excitement, her wonder over its beauty, and her pride in her pupils' affection. He could see her lovely face, her shining eyes, he could feel her soft kiss, and the caress of her hand in his. Oh, what a miracle of love and beauty she was to him that night! He told Isabel all about it, and then he spoke of its theft, and of his frequent promises and failures to recover it for her.

"But, brother," said Isabel, "you have now quite unexpectedly got it back. It is a good omen. Some day, when you are not looking for such a thing, you will get its owner back, you will put it on her finger. I feel sure of it."

"I was a brute, Isabel."

"You were a coward. You were afraid of mother."

"No man ever had so many opportunities for happiness as Theodora offered me. I scorned them all. Why was I so blind, so unjust, so cruel? I am miserable, and deserve to be miserable. We can go to h.e.l.l before we die, Isabel."

"Yes, we can, but we send ourselves there. 'If I make my bed in h.e.l.l,'

said the great seer and singer. It is always _I_ that makes that bed, never G.o.d, never any other human being." And it was Robert Campbell, he himself, and no other, who had made his bed in that forlorn circle of h.e.l.l, where men who have lost their Great Opportunity, weep and wail over their forfeited happiness. Poor Isabel, she remembered, and longed to remind her brother, that even there G.o.d was with him, waiting to be gracious, ready to help! But she was too cowardly, she did not like to give religious advice; she was only a woman--he would wonder at her. So she went away, and did not deliver the gracious message, and felt poor and mean because of her fear and her faithlessness.

This conversation, however, made a decided change in Robert Campbell's life. It had always been believed by the family, that Isabel, unknown to herself, had a certain occult, prophesying power; frequently she had proved that with her insight was foresight. So, though Robert said nothing to her when she told him the getting back of the ring was a good omen, he believed her and derived a singular peace and confidence from the prediction. At that very hour, he virtually put a stop to all inquiries, and to all search; he resolved to leave to those behind him the bringing back of his wife, and their reconciliation.

Carrying out this resolve compelled him to take account of the money he had spent in the quest for Theodora and his son, and the total gave him a shock. It had been an absolutely fruitless waste of money, and he had a fiery impetuous determination to restore to his estate the full amount. To this object he devoted himself, and if a man is willing to lose his heart and soul in money-making, he is sure to succeed.

So the weeks and the months pa.s.sed, and he turned himself, body and soul, into gold and tried to forget. The loss of his wife and child became a something that had happened long ago--an event sorrowful, and far off. For there was nothing to keep their memory alive. No one mentioned their names, and the very rooms they had inhabited, had lost all remembrance of them. They were simply empty rooms now, for every particle of the lovely and loving lives that had once informed them, had been withdrawn.

Nearly two years had pa.s.sed since Christina married, nearly as long since Theodora and David disappeared, and the big, silent Traquair House was a desolate place. Mrs. Campbell had no one but her servants to dispute with, for though Isabel's seclusion was constantly more marked, Robert would not listen to a word against his sister. She had been sorry for him, and forespoken good for him; he stood staunchly by all she did.

"Do you know that she is going away this spring, into all sorts of wild and savage countries, and among pagans and papists, and worse--if there is worse; with nothing but a woman nearly as old as myself to lean on. I wonder at your allowing such nonsense."

"Isabel knows what she is doing. She is going with Lady Mary Grafton.

They will have their maids, and a first-cla.s.s courier. I think she is doing right."

"And I shall be left here, all alone?"

"Do you count me a nonent.i.ty?"