Meanwhile, Lydia, on her return to the castle after a long drive
round the country, had attempted to overcome an attack of
restlessness by setting to work on the biography of her father. With
a view to preparing a chapter on his taste in literature she had
lately been examining his favorite books for marked passages. She
now resumed this search, not setting methodically to work, but
standing perched on the library ladder, taking down volume after
volume, and occasionally dipping into the contents for a few pages
or so. At this desultory work the time passed as imperceptibly as
the shadows lengthened. The last book she examined was a volume of
poems. There were no marks in it; but it opened at a page which had
evidently lain open often before. The first words Lydia saw were
these: "What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through Instead
of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do; Hard and cold and
small, of all hearts the worst of all."
Lydia hastily stepped down from the ladder, and recoiled until she
reached a chair, where she sat and read and reread these lines. The
failing light roused her to action. She replaced the book on the
shelf, and said, as she went to the writing-table, "If such a doubt
as that haunted my father it will haunt me, unless I settle what is
to be my heart's business now and forever. If it be possible for a
child of mine to escape this curse of autovivisection, it must
inherit its immunity from its father, and not from me--from the man
of emotion who never thinks, and not from the woman of
introspection, who cannot help thinking. Be it so."