Page:Francesca Carrara 3.pdf/151

148 but, with a naturally noble and generous nature, his faults were precisely of a kind that made daily life wretched. He was arrogant, petulant, and self-willed; everything was expected to fly before him; and though, after an ebullition of passion, no penitence was held too great on his part, still the hasty word had been said, the wound inflicted, and still the offence was soon repeated. One perpetual source of annoyance, too, was her father's continual allusion to the Evelyns. He seemed to hate the name with a hate which was the only strong feeling he possessed. The truth was, that he had been humiliated by the superiority of both father and son; and with the genuine ingratitude of a little mind, he could not forgive the kind offices which he owed to both. Uncertain of what Robert Evelyn might now feel towards her—sometimes almost tempted, for his sake, to wish that he might have changed—it will easily be supposed that Francesca's most treasured secret never passed her lips—ah! the solitude but added to its strength. Deep, unutterably deep, is the love treasured in the hidden heart, on which the eye never looks, and of which no tongue ever tells.

A few days brought Lucy's wedding; and Francesca was with her early in the morning.