‘Better than I can ever deserve, try as I may,’ he murmured, in the deep tone of conviction, as he folded her in his arms, and soothed the passionate agitation which shook her–and tried to quench the tears which rushed from her eyes–tears which none could have named with certainty as being of joy or of grief.
But the die was cast: the bargain was struck. He might return to his home with a mind free of care for the future; but with all the diviner elements in his nature degraded, soiled, maimed, for they had been dragged through the dust, and grievously maltreated.
Avice and her escorts arrived late that afternoon, and he met them, and they went with him to his house. That is, Avice and Ellen went with him–Somerville returned to Brentwood.
Avice felt a chill dismay strike her heart, at her brother’s reception of her. There was an absence, a constraint, a coldness in all his words and movements, which would not be removed. She expressed her delight at the sight of her new home, and he absently replied that it was very well, but rather dreary. She felt very soon that some miserable explanation was to come. It came almost directly. They had got into the house, and Avice had taken off her things, and was somewhat languidly partaking of the meal which had been placed before her. Suddenly she said:
‘Jerome, you have never once asked after Sara.’
She saw his face suddenly turn pale, and his lips set. The hand which had been lying on the table, trifling with a paper-knife, closed upon that knife quickly and firmly: he raised his eyes to his sister’s face, and said coldly:
‘Miss Ford–how is she?’
‘Miss Ford!’ ejaculated the young girl, horror-struck. ‘Jerome! what has happened? You speak as if she was nothing to you.’
‘Nor is she anything to me now,’ he answered, with that cold and pitiless cruelty, unbending and unremorseful, which so often appears in weak natures when they are driven to choose between themselves and another–when the moment comes in which egoistic or altruistic feelings can no longer be evenly balanced–in which one set must prevail over the other.
‘Sara–nothing to you! I–I do not understand,’ she stammered, with a sickening sensation of fear and bewilderment.