‘I love my brother for trusting in me. And he shall never hear a murmur from my lips if he will continue to trust me and guide me.’
As they stood together, they kissed one another with a kind of solemnity. Life was changed, but they still remained to sustain one another.
CHAPTER VI.
AVICE READS A CHAPTER OF A NEW BOOK.
There was no reason for, and no wish to linger at Ems when the necessary delay was over, and the necessary business accomplished. In a week from the time of Mr. Wellfield’s death, Jerome and his sister proposed to leave the place, on their way home. During this week, Avice lived through more surprise, more wonder, and more emotion, compressed into seven short days, than had been contained in seven long years of her former life.
Her brother and his character formed to her a strange new book, which she was never weary of studying. The outside of that book was of the most alluring character; and she, of an intensely receptive nature, and intensely sensitive, too, to beauty, delighted in that fair outside, in those polished manners, in the smooth, calm, composed demeanour. She delighted to go out with Jerome, to behold others turning to look at him; in every proof that she was not alone in her sense of being fascinated by him. They naturally went out little during those days of waiting; when they did go, they went alone together, avoiding the crowded gardens and the more public walks. They had, therefore, ample opportunity of learning more of one another; and perhaps each modified the estimate already formed of the other’s character. But the affection increased. In their long walks to the Concordia, or along the white country roads, Jerome told her about all their circumstances—told her he did not know whether they would have any secure income, even the smallest, upon which to live; asked her if she could reconcile herself to existence with him, perhaps in a back parlour of some dingy town-lodgings. To all of which questions her ‘yes, oh, yes!’ leaped out with an eager readiness.
‘Now I begin to see what papa meant when he kept calling me a little interloper, Jerome,’ she said one day. ‘If it were not for me, how much easier everything would be for you. I have heard that a man, alone, need never fear anything, even starvation; but that when he has a woman with him it clogs him, and paralyses him, and unfits him——’
‘Hush, child!’ he said, putting his finger on her lip, and smiling at the same time; ‘that is nothing less than blasphemy, and I know where you learnt it.’