Christobelle endeavoured to calm her mother's nerves, but repeated attacks had destroyed their tone, and she could not rally at pleasure. Mrs. Bevan was summoned to attend her lady, and she was laid upon her bed to receive the usual remedies. Her ladyship was then left in quiet and in darkness for some hours. This scene was but the recurrence of a now constantly repeated attack of the nerves upon every sound which reached her ear from without. The storm, the breeze, the sighing of the winds, the soft and delicious music which occasionally rose on the air, all created the same terror--it was Clara reproaching her for youth and happiness blasted, and constantly exclaiming, "Oh, hard-hearted mother!" Time increased the disorder. Four years' residence in Scotland, far from the scene of Clara's tragic departure, and removed beyond all allusion to the events which had occurred, did not soften by distance the regrets of Lady Wetheral's heart. Year after year brought increased nervousness; and Sir John had endeavoured to lead his lady's thoughts again towards Wetheral, but in vain. "She had resolved never again to visit a country which had brought her so much disquietude. Clara was gone--gone from her for ever, tainted with bitter ingratitude, and the grandeur of Lady Ennismore's establishment was to her a blank--she had never witnessed it. All that she had most anxiously desired had become a source of misery to her feelings, and she only desired now to live far away from painful associations." Sir John pointed out the near neighbourhood of her two happily-married daughters, Pynsent and Boscawen; but it failed to create pleasing thoughts. "No, I have no wish to see those objects which will remind me of Julia's banishment and Clara's death. If they are happy, why was not Julia to be with me, and why was Clara ungrateful? Why was _I_ to be defeated in my views? Why was Julia carried abroad without one interview with the mother who endured so much to secure her establishment, without even writing to me? No; I am miserable, but let me alone, and let me die here!" Lady Wetheral would at such moments turn to Miss Wetheral with looks of reproach, and inveigh against her unattractive appearance or manner. "If you wished to give me pleasure, Bell, you would not fly in my face, as Clara did. If you attended to your person, I might yet be gratified by hearing praises of your beauty, and receive pleasure in contemplating your future establishment; but I have no hopes for you. I have no inducement to quit this dreary Lochleven. I will not carry forth a daughter who is blind to her own advancement, or subject myself to ridicule, by the constant appendage of a young woman who is likely to pass single to her grave. If I could rouse you to exertion, I might rally too; but this determined indifference to future distinction destroys me. I am doomed to suffer every gradation of parental disappointment."