Then
all at once an impulse came upon her to ask, "Why did you let my parents
go so far away? was it so very wrong in them to marry?"
"No, not wrong at all. It is written, 'A man shall leave his father and
mother, and cleave unto his wife,'" was the baffling reply she got, and
it silenced her. And not for that occasion only.
When Bessie retired into the octagon parlor her grandfather stayed
behind. He had been to see Mr. John Short that day, and had heard that a
new aspect had come over the electioneering sky. The Radicals had
received an impetus from some quarter unknown, and were preparing to
make such a hard fight for the representation of Norminster that the
triumph of the Tory party was seriously threatened. This news had vexed
him, but it was not of that he meditated chiefly when he was left alone.
It was of Bessie. He had founded certain pleasurable expectations upon
her, and he felt that these expectations were losing their bloom. He
could not fail to recollect her quietness of last night, when he noticed
the languor of her eyes, the dejection of her mouth, and the effort it
was to her to speak. The question concerning her parents had aroused the
slumbering ache of old remembrance, and had stung him anew with a sense
of her condemnation. A feeling akin to remorse visited him as he sat
considering, and by degrees realizing, what he had done to her, and was
doing; but he had his motive, he had his object in it, and the motive
had seemed to justify the means until he came to see her face to face.
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