But a few weeks' experience had shown that they were strange and
uncongenial to each other. There was no true affection between
them--only a certain haunting instinct of kindred. And even this was
weakened or embittered by those memories in Alice's mind which Kitty
could never approach and Alice never forget. What was she to do with her
half-sister, stranded and dishonored as she was?--How content or comfort
her?--How live her own life beside her?
Kitty sat silent, her eyes fixed upon the barca which held the coffin
under its pall. Her mind was the scene of an infinite number of floating
and fragmentary recollections; of the day when she and Cliffe had
followed the
murazzi towards the open sea; of the meeting at Verona;
of the long winter, with its hardship and its horror; and that hatred
and contempt which had sprung up between them. Could she love no one,
cling faithfully to no one? And now the restless brain, the vast
projects, the mixed nature, the half-greatness of the man had been
silenced--crushed--in a moment, by the stroke of a knife. He had been
killed by a jealous woman--because of his supposed love for another
woman, whose abhorrence, in truth, he had earned in a few short weeks.
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