All this disturbed and changed him; and these daily anxieties and discomforts affected his family too--Emily, indeed, but little, except inasmuch as she was grieved to see her father grieve. But Lady Hastings was not only pained and mortified herself--she contrived to communicate a share of all she felt to others. She became sad--somewhat sullen--and fancied all the time while she was depressing her husband's spirits, and aggravating all he felt by despondency and murmurs, instead of cheering and supporting him by making light of the threatened evils, that she was but participating sympathetically in his anxieties, and feeling a due share of his sorrows. She had no idea of the duty of cheerfulness in a wife, and how often it may prove the very blessing that God intended in giving man a helpmate.
Sickness, it is true, had diminished somewhat the light spirits of her youth, but she had assuredly become a creature of repinings--a murmurer by habit--fit to double rather than divide any load of misfortune which fate might cast upon a husband's shoulders.
Lady Hastings strove rather to look sad, Emily Hastings to be gay and cheerful, and both did it perhaps a little too much for the mood and circumstances in which Sir Philip then was. He wondered when he came home, after an anxious day, that Lady Hastings did nothing to cheer him--that every word was gloomy and sad--that she seemed far more affected at the thought of loss of fortune and station than himself. He wondered also that Emily could be so light and playful, so joyous and seemingly unconcerned, when he was suffering such anxiety.
Poor Emily! she was forcing spirits in vain, and playing the kindliest of hypocrites--fashioning every word, and every look, to win him away from painful thought, only to be misunderstood.
But the misunderstanding was heightened and pointed by the hand of malice. The emotion which Sir Philip had displayed in the court had not been forgotten by some whom a spirit of revenge rendered keen and clear-sighted.
It seemed impossible to mingle Emily's name directly with the law proceedings which were taking place; but more than once in accidental correspondence it was insinuated that secret information, which had led to the development of John Ayliffe's claim, had been obtained from some near relation of Sir Philip Hastings, and it became generally rumored and credited in the county, that Emily had indiscreetly betrayed some secrets of her father's. Of course these rumors did not reach her ears, but they reached Sir Philip Hastings, and he thought it strange, and more strange, that Emily had never mentioned to him her several interviews with John Ayliffe, which he had by this time learned were more than one.