"Did she tell you her plans?"
He spoke very calmly, holding his sister's hand.
"She doesn't seem to have any. The Friedlands have offered her a home, of course. Alan!—will you put your ear down to me?"
He stooped, and she whispered brokenly, holding him several times when he would have drawn back.
But at last he released himself. A flush had stolen over his fine and sharpened features.
"My dear sister, if it were so—what difference can it make?"
He spoke with a quick interrogation. But his glance had an intensity, it expressed a determination, which made her cry out—
"Alan—if she gave way?"
"She will never give way. She has more self-control; but her mind is in precisely the same bitter and envenomed state. Indeed, she has grown more fixed, more convinced. The influence of her Cambridge friends has been decisive. Every day I feel for what she has to bear and put up with—poor child!—in this house."
"It can't be for long," said Augustina with tears; and she lay for a while, pondering, and gathering force. But presently she made her brother stoop to her again.