The next day Malcom brought his friend to his mother, whose heart he won at once by his evident delicate health, his gentlemanly manners, and, perhaps most of all, because he had been an orphan for years, and was so much alone in the world. She decided to welcome him to her home, and to give him the companionship of her young people.
Howard Sinclair was a young man of brilliant intellectual promise. He had inherited most keen sensibilities, an almost morbid delicacy of thought, a variable disposition, and a frail body. Both father and mother died before he was ten years of age, leaving a large fortune for him, their only child; and, since then, his home had been with an aged grandmother. Without any young companions in the home, and lacking desire for activity, he had given himself up to an almost wholly sedentary life. The body, so delicate by nature, had always been made secondary to the alert mind. His luxurious tastes could all be gratified, and thus far he had lived like some conservatory plant.
The very darling of his grandmother's heart, it was like death to her to part from him when the physicians decided that to save his life it was an imperative necessity that he should live for a a time in a warmer climate. It was an utter impossibility for her to accompany him. He shrank from any other companion, therefore had set forth with only his faithful John, who had been an old servant in the family before he was born, as valet. He went first to Egypt, where he had remained as long as the heat would permit, then had gone northwest to the Italian lakes and Switzerland, whence he had now come to spend a time in Florence.
Lonely, homesick, and disheartened, it was indeed like a "gift of the gods" to him when one day, as he was leaving his banker's on Via Tornabuoni he met the familiar face of Malcom Douglas. And when he was welcomed to his old schoolmate's home and family circle, the weary young man felt for the first time in many months the sensation of rest and peace.
His evident lack of physical strength, and the quickly coming and going color in his cheeks, told Mrs. Douglas that he could never know perfect health; but he said that the change of country and climate had already done him much good, and this encouraged him to think of staying from home a year or two in the hope that then all danger of active disease might have passed.
He so evidently longed for companionship that Malcom and the girls told him of their life,—of their Italian lessons,—their reading,—Mr. Sumner's talks about Italian painting,—Malcom's private college studies (which he had promised his mother to pursue if she would give him this year abroad), and all that which was filling their days. He was especially interested in their lessons on the Italian masters of painting, and asked if they would permit him to join them.
"If you will only come to me when you have any trouble with your Greek and Latin, Malcom," he said, "perhaps I can repay you in the slightest degree for the wonderful pleasure this would give me."
So as Mr. Sumner was willing, his little class received the addition of Howard Sinclair.
"Why so sober, Malcom?" asked his mother, as she found him alone by himself. "Is not the arrangement that your friend join you agreeable?"
"Oh, yes, mother, he is a nice fellow, though a sort of a prig, and I wish to do all we can for him; only—I do hope he will not monopolize Betty and Barbara always, as he has seemed to do this afternoon."