The attempt which Isabel made to draw near to her in this crisis was the occasion of a scene entirely new in their relations, and not thereafter to be repeated. There were guests at Knightswell, and Ada did not appear. Isabel went to the girl’s room, and obtained admission.
“Then, why don’t you come down? I very much wish you would. Will you come down to please me?”
The girl was sitting at a table, seemingly engaged with her books. In reality she had been motionless and unemployed for a couple of hours. She was pale and her eyes bloodshot.
“No, Mrs. Clarendon,” she exclaimed; “I cannot come down to please you! Why should I torture myself to give you pleasure?”
She had risen, and stood with a face of passionate anguish.
“Torture yourself?” Isabel repeated, almost in fear.
“Yes; it is torture, and you might know it. You ask me to meet your friends because you think it, I suppose, a duty to do so; in truth, you are ashamed of me, you had far rather not see me downstairs. I know myself well enough, and I have glasses in my room. I know what these people say and think of me. I can bear it no longer; I want to leave you! I cannot live with you!”
Isabel could not find words to reply. There was a horrible element of truth in the girls suspicions, though Ada did not and could not know its meaning. It was, indeed, out of mere consideration for her feelings that Isabel was pressing her to show herself.
“You can’t live with me, Ada?” she said at length, in despair that she could not speak with the utterance of true feeling. “Am I unkind to you?”
“You are nothing to me!” was the passionate reply. “Neither kind nor unkind--you are nothing to me, and I am nothing to you! Why did you take me into your house? What interest had you in me? Who am I?”
“Ada, you are the child of a friend of Mr. Clarendon’s. Mr. Clarendon desired that I should take you and bring you up, as you had lost your own parents. That is all I know of you--all.”
“Then you have done your best, and now let me go. We shall never like each other. You took me from a poor home, and I suppose my parents were poor people. It is not in my blood to like you, or to live your life. When I was a child it didn’t matter; but, now I see and understand, I know the difference between us. I will _never_ meet people who look on me with contempt! Let me go. I will be a servant; it is what I am suited for. You can’t keep me against my will, and I wish to leave you!”