CHAPTER VII.

JAEL, OR JUDITH, OR CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

Sissy, when she reached her room that night, drew up the blind and stood looking out at the park, which was flooded with moonlight. "It ought to be Percival's," she thought. "I should like Horace to have plenty of money, but the old house ought to be Percival's. He is so good: he screens Horace instead of thinking of himself. I do believe Horace is in some scrape now. And Aunt Middleton is always thinking about him, too: she won't let Uncle Thorne be just to Percival. Oh, it is a shame!--If he had Brackenhill perhaps he would marry Miss Lisle. I wonder if he is in love with her? He spoke so coolly, not as if he were the least bit angry, when Godfrey Hammond laughed at her. But he said she had a noble face.--What did it remind me of when he said 'Judith'?" Sissy was perplexed for a few moments, and then their talk on the terrace a month before flashed into her mind--"Jael, or Judith, or Charlotte Corday," and she remembered the very intonation with which Percival had repeated "Judith." "Ah!" said the girl half aloud, with a sudden intuition, "he was thinking of her when he talked of heroic women!--Why wasn't I born noble and heroic as well as others? Is it my fault if I can't _bear_ people to be angry with me--if I always stop and think and hesitate, and then the moment is gone? I couldn't have driven the nail in, like Jael, for fear there should be just time for him to look up at me. I should have thrown the hammer down and died, I think. I wonder what made her able to do it--how she struck, and how she felt when the nail went crashing in? I wonder whether I _could_ have done it if Sisera had hated Percival--if I knew he meant to kill him--if it had been Percival's life or his?"

Sissy proceeded to ponder the biblical narrative (with this slight variation), but she came to no satisfactory decision. She inclined to the opinion that Sisera would have woke up, somehow. She could not imagine what she could possibly feel like when the deed was done, except that she was certain she should be afraid ever to be alone with herself again for one moment as long as she lived.

So she went back to the original question: "I dare say Miss Lisle is brave and calm, and horribly strong-minded: why wasn't I born the same as she was? Perhaps Percival would have cared for me then. He _did_ say even I might find something I could die for: he didn't think I was quite a coward. Ah! if I could only show him I wasn't!"

She stood for a moment looking out: "He may marry Miss Lisle if he likes, and--and I hope they'll be very happy indeed. But if ever I get a chance I'll do something--for Percival."

With which magnanimous determination Sissy went to bed; and if she did not have a nightmare tumult of Jael and Judith, nails and hammers, and murdered men about her pillow as she slept, I can but think her fortunate. But her last thought was a happy one: "Perhaps he doesn't care about her, after all!"