"What?"
"He put another person's name on the back of a note he gave."
She did not look up, and Hugh was silent for a moment.
"How do you know?"
"Mr. Thorn wrote it to aunt Lucy--it was Mr. Thorn's father."
Hugh sat down and leaned his head on the table. A long, long, time passed,--unmeasured by the wild coursing of thought to and fro. Then Fleda came and knelt down at the table beside him, and put her arm round his neck.
"Dear Hugh," she said--and if ever love and tenderness and sympathy could be distilled in tones, such drops were those that fell upon the mind's ear,--"can't you look up at me?"
He did then, but he did not give her a chance to look at him. He locked his arms about her, bringing her close to his breast; and for a few minutes, in utter silence, they knew what strange sweetness pure affection can mingle even in the communion of sorrow. There were tears shed in those minutes that, bitter as they seemed at the time, Memory knew had been largely qualified with another admixture.
"Dear Hugh," said Fleda,--"let us keep what we can--won't you go to bed and rest?"
He looked dreadfully as if he needed it. But the usual calmness and sweetness of his face was not altered;--it was only deepened to very great sadness. Mentally, Fleda thought, he had borne the shock better than his mother; for the bodily frame she trembled. He had not answered and she spoke again.