"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."