’Because I can’t put one whom I love better than both, and who deserves it, to greater misery,’ said Albinia, embracing her.

’Then do not put me to the misery of being ungenerous, and the shame of having my folly suspected.’

Albinia would have argued still, but the children came in, Sophy went away, and there was no possibility of a tete-a-tete.  How strange it was to have such a tumult of feeling within, and know that the same must be tenfold multiplied in the hearts of those two girls, and yet go through all the domestic conventionalities, each wearing a mask of commonplace ease, as though nothing had happened!

Genevieve had, Albinia suspected, been crying excessively; for there was that effaced annihilated appearance that tears produced on her, but otherwise she did her part in answering her host, who was very fond of her, and always made her an object of attention.  Albinia found herself betraying more abstraction, she was so anxiously watching Sophy, who acquitted herself best of all, had kept tears from her eyes, talked more than usual, and looked brilliant, with a bright colour dyeing her cheeks.  She was evidently sustained by eagerness to obtain her generous purpose, and did not yet realize the price.

The spray of holly was lying as if it had been tossed in vexation upon the marble slab in the hall.  Albinia, from the stairs, saw Sophy take it up, and waited to see what she would do with it.  The Sophy she had once known would have dashed it into the flames, and then have repented.  No!  Sophy held it tenderly, and looked at the glossy leaves and coral fruit with no angry eye; she even raised it to her lips, but it was to pierce with one of the long prickles till her brow drew together at the smart, and the blood started.  Then she began to mount the stairs, and meeting Albinia, said quietly, ’I was going to take this to Genevieve’s room, it is empty now, but perhaps you had better take care of it for her, out of sight.  It will be her greatest treasure to-morrow.’

Mr. Kendal read aloud as usual, but who of his audience attended?  Certainly not Albinia.  She sat with her head bent over her work, revolving the history of these last two years, and trying to collect herself after the sudden shock, and the angry feelings of disappointment that surged within, in much need of an object of wrath.  Alas! who could that object be but that blind, warm-hearted, impulsive Mistress Albinia Kendal?

She saw plain enough, now it was too late, that there had not been a shadow of sentiment in that lively confiding Irishman, used to intimacy with a herd of cousins, and viewing all connexions as cousins.  She remembered his conversation with her brother and her brother’s impression; she thought of the unloverlike dread of ague in Emily’s moonlight walk; she recalled the many occasions when she had thought him remiss, and she could not but acquit him of any designed flirtation, any dangerous tenderness,