Two days--four days, and a week passed, and Brace did not see Isa. He
sought all her favourite rides, and waited about for hours, but she did
not come. He felt sure that something was wrong, and wondered again and
again whether that something was connected with the meeting with Lord
Maudlaine. As the days passed, Brace's mind was incessantly tortured by
imaginings of garbled accounts, of insidious attempts to poison the ear
of Isa, and at length his anxiety became almost unbearable. If he had
made some arrangement by which he might have sent a letter, he would not
have cared, but, under the circumstances, he felt that to write would
only be to insure the return of his note, and he dared not send.
A fortnight had passed and no news, when Brace Norton's heart leaped as,
at breakfast, Captain Norton unlocked the letter-bag, and passed over a
couple of letters to his son, one of which was in a handwriting he had
never before seen, but whose authoress his heart told him, as, unable to
control himself, he rose from the table and sought his room.
The note was but short, and contained exactly what he had anticipated,
but none the less it made him sink on a chair by his dressing-table,
cover his face with his hands, and groan in the bitterness of his heart.
It was precisely as he had conjectured. Sir Murray had angrily
commanded his daughter to refrain from meeting the reader any more. He
had told her that she must learn to school her heart, for such a union,
for family reasons, was absolutely impossible; and, besides, he had
passed his word that she should be the wife of Lord Maudlaine, who had,
during the past fortnight, been most assiduous in his attentions,
driving her, Isa said, to taking refuge in her own room for hours every
day. She told him that they must meet no more; that she was very
unhappy; but that Jane, the housekeeper, her old nurse, had spoken
comforting words to her, telling her that perhaps, after all, the old
troubles between the two houses might be swept away.
"I would not, on any account, my child, advise you against your papa's
wishes," Jane had said; "but you must not marry Lord Maudlaine while
your poor little heart is another's. I have seen too much misery
amongst those you know for that to take place. You must wait, my
child--you must wait--wait."