"That's one way of being useful," remarked Mr. Thornycroft.
Isaac laughed. "I confess I am idle this afternoon: and there's nothing particular to do."
"Isaac--" Mr. Thornycroft came to a long pause, and then went on rapidly, imparting the news that he had to tell. And it was a somewhat curious fact, that an embarrassment pervaded his manner in making this communication to his second son, quite contrasting with the easy coolness shown to his eldest. A bright flush rose to Isaac's fair Saxon face as he listened.
"A wife, sir! Will it be well that you should introduce one to the Red Court?"
"Don't make me go over the ground again, Isaac. I repeat that I think it _will_ be well. Some lady must be had here--a wife or a governess, and the former in my judgment will be the lesser evil."
"As you please, of course, sir," returned Isaac, who could not forget the perfect respect and courtesy due to his father, however he might deplore the news. "I have heard you say--"
"That had the time to come over again you would not have married my mother. I think it killed her, sir."
"My marrying her?" asked the justice in a joke. Isaac smiled.
"No, sir. You know what I mean; the constant state of fear she lived in."
"She was one of those sensitive, timid women that fear works upon; Cyril is the only one of you like her," said the justice, his thoughts reverting with some sadness to his departed wife. "But the error committed there, Isaac, lay in my disclosing it to her."
"In disclosing what, sir?" asked Isaac, rather at sea.
"The secret connected with the Red Court Farm," laconically answered Mr. Thornycroft.
There ensued a pause. Isaac put a straw in his lips and bit it like a man in pain. He had loved his mother with no common love; to hear that her place was to be occupied fell on him like a blow, putting aside other considerations against it.
"I don't see it, Isaac. But for an accident your mother would never have suspected. I then disclosed the truth to her, and I cursed myself for my folly afterwards. But for that she might have been with us now. As to risk, we run the same every day with Mary Anne. Ah me! your poor mother was too sensitive, and the fear killed her."
Isaac winced. He remembered how his mother had faded visibly, day by day; he could see, even now, the alarm in her soft eyes that the twilight often brought.