I
watched his face while the friend who has been better than a father
to him was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not
deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame and no distress in
it--I saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is
selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungenerous--he is only twenty, and he
has the worst failings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I
find you meeting in secret--the man who has taken such a place in your
favor that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from _my_ lips!
Magdalen! this will end ill. For God's sake, think of what I have
said to you, and control yourself before it is too late!" She stopped,
vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.
Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.
"You are so violent," she said, "and so unlike yourself, that I hardly
know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get for my pains.
You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you are unreasonably
angry with me because I won't hate him, too. Don't, Norah! you hurt my
hand."
Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. "I shall never hurt your
heart," she said; and suddenly turned her back on Magdalen as she spoke
the words.
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