“And you will go to-day! is that kind, Miss Duncan, to hurry away the moment you can move; at any risk to leave my house, rather than oblige me?”
“You know, Mr. Huyton,” replied Hilary, “we have sometimes other things to consider, besides obliging our friends; but it can not justly be called unkindness to do our duty; and mine takes me home to-day.”
“Of course, if your duty takes you away,” was his answer, “my pleasure or happiness must not interfere with it; they have no right to be considered for a moment.”
“I am sure my father would tell you that the two can not really be at variance,” answered Hilary, earnestly. “If we both follow the road of duty, we may be certain that we shall not come into dangerous collision. They are lines which never clash, except through carelessness or mistake. They may diverge widely, they may run parallel, but they will have no unsafe crossings, if we take conscience for our engineer.”
“True, dear child,” said Mr. Duncan, “as your favorite poet says:
“‘Duty, like a strict preceptor,
Sometimes frowns or seems to frown;’
still, when we have the courage to look her calmly in the face, we shall find the frown is our mistake; a mere shadow cast by fear or over-anxious wishes.”
Mr. Huyton make no further objections, and the family were permitted to return to the Vicarage, as had been proposed. Nobody, however, could prevent his riding beside the carriage the whole way, or to forbid his being there to hand Hilary out when she descended from it; it was very disagreeable to her, but he would not see that; and even when she entered the house, he appeared extremely reluctant to take his leave, and allow her to rest in peace.
Once more in her place at home, and gathering strength, every hour, from the pleasure of being there, Hilary could not avoid immediately perceiving the extreme depression of spirits which overpowered Maurice; and with a woman’s quickness, made more acute by her own recent experience, she decided that his unfortunate attachment to Dora, must in some way be the cause. Of the existence of this attachment she had been for some time aware; but not guessing what had really passed between them, she concluded that it was his own sense of its hopelessness which oppressed her brother. Eager to bury those too-encroaching thoughts of another person, which were continually creeping into her mind, she would yield nothing to the lassitude of recent illness, would allow herself no rest, lest memory should be engrossed by one image; but resolutely engaged in all her usual occupations, and threw herself with more than her former zeal into the cares, hopes, and pleasures of those around her. Of these, naturally, Maurice was the first, after her father; and his affairs, indeed, were peculiarly prominent just then. Captain Hepburn had written to say, that he had received the promise of Maurice’s appointment to the