Hugh honoured the sacrifice, and yet half despised his cousin for the power of making it. He would have considered it his duty to yield up his most cherished feelings for Arthur, and yet he regarded him with a shrinking that, in so passionate a nature, was almost hate. Truly, his mother was right in thinking that such morbid feelings, did not deserve encouragement. And then there was the constant haunting belief that he was enduring in silence a loss and a want similar to that for which everyone was pitying his cousin. And when Hugh’s thoughts took that turn he sometimes felt as if he were making a sort of secret atonement. But all this was in the depths of Hugh’s soul; his sensible outer judgment knew the probable risk of reaction for so young a man as Arthur, and felt that home and work were his best safeguards. And Hugh remembered that he had still his rooms at the Bank House, where a press of business might always detain him if Redhurst became quite unendurable. When Frederica went to school the next morning she told Flossy, as she came into her Italian class and was waiting for some of her companions, that Arthur was coming home.
“Signor Arthur?” said Violante, who was standing by.
“Yes,” answered Frederica, who, of course, had been informed of the meeting at Caletto; “he will be surprised to see you, signorina. He is coming back and going to begin at the Bank, and go on as usual.”
“I hope—it will do,” said Flossy, rather tremulously. Violante glanced at her and began to read herself, as the girls came in and took their places; and Miss Florence let her take the lead, and neither asked nor answered a question for full five minutes.
End of the Second Volume.