Salted With Fire | Page 8

in her; and while his ambition made him imagine himself so
much her superior as to exclude the least thought of marrying her, it did
not prevent him from yielding to the delight her confession caused him,
or from persuading her that there was no harm in loving one to whom
she must always be dear, whatever his future might bring with it. Isy
left the room not a little consoled, and with a new hope in possession of
her innocent imagination; leaving James exultant over his conquest,
and indulging a more definite pleasure than hitherto in the person and
devotion of the girl. As to any consciousness in him of danger to either
of them, it was no more than, on the shore, the uneasy stir of a storm
far out at sea. Had the least thought of wronging her invaded his mind,
he would have turned from it with abhorrence; yet was he endangering
all her peace without giving it one reasonable thought. He was acting
with a selfishness too much ingrained to manifest its own unlovely
shape; while in his mind lay all the time a half-conscious care to avoid
making the girl any promise.
As to her fitness for a minister's wife, he had never asked himself a
question concerning it; but in truth she might very soon have grown far
fitter for the position than he was for that of a minister. In character she
was much beyond him; and in breeding and consciousness far more of
a lady than he of a gentleman--fine gentleman as he would fain know
himself. Her manners were immeasurably better than his, because they
were simple and aimed at nothing. Instinctively she avoided whatever,
had she done it, she would at once have recognized as uncomely. She
did not know that simplicity was the purest breeding, yet from mere
truth of nature practised it unknowing. If her words were

older-fashioned, that is more provincial than his, at least her tone was
less so, and her utterance was prettier than if, like him, she had aped an
Anglicized mode of speech. James would, I am sure, have admired her
more if she had been dressed on Sundays in something more showy
than a simple cotton gown; and I fear that her poverty had its influence
in the freedoms he allowed himself with her.
Her aunt was a weak as well as unsuspicious woman, who had known
better days, and pitied herself because they were past and gone. She
gave herself no anxiety as to her niece's prudence, but continued well
assured of it even while her very goodness was conspiring against her
safety. It would have required a man, not merely of greater goodness
than James, but of greater insight into the realities of life as well, to
perceive the worth and superiority of the girl who waited upon him
with a devotion far more angelic than servile; for whatever might have
seemed to savour of the latter, had love, hopeless of personal advantage,
at the root of it.
Thus things went on for a while, with a continuous strengthening of the
pleasant yet not altogether easy bonds in which Isobel walked, and a
constant increase of the attraction that drew the student to the self-
yielding girl; until the appearance of another lodger in the house was
the means of opening Blatherwick's eyes to the state of his own feelings,
by occasioning the birth and recognition of a not unnatural jealousy,
which "gave him pause." On Isy's side there was not the least occasion
for this jealousy, and he knew it; but not the less he saw that, if he did
not mean to go further, here he must stop--the immediate result of
which was that he began to change a little in his behaviour toward her,
when at any time she had to enter his room in ministration to his wants.
Of this change the poor girl was at once aware, but she attributed it to a
temporary absorption in his studies. Soon, however, she could not
doubt that not merely was his voice or his countenance changed toward
her, but that his heart had grown cold, and that he was no longer
"friends with her." For there was another and viler element than mere
jealousy concerned in his alteration: he had become aware of a more
real danger into which he was rapidly drifting--that of irrecoverably

blasting the very dawn of his prospects by an imprudent marriage. "To
saddle himself with a wife," as he vulgarily expressed it, before he had
gained his license--before even he had had the poorest opportunity of
distinguishing himself in that wherein lay his every hope and ambition
of proving his excellence, was a thing not for a moment to be
contemplated! And now,