Explore "Gathered In" by Catherine Helen Spence on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hugh Carmichael stayed at Tingalpa till Kenneth was fairly sick of him, and as he wished to ask his sister to spend a week or two quietly there, he was very anxious that his uncle should give him his congé. No persuasion would induce Kenneth to proceed in any way against his father, and even his uncle had ceased to press it before Carmichael took his departure.
It was a very peaceful visit that Sybil paid. Mr. Oswald tried to look severe at her because of her old influence with his son, and her present influence over his nephew, which strengthened his resistance to the voice of justice and of reason, but the girl won her way to his heart by her gentleness, by her devotion to Kenneth, by her exquisite singing, and by the little touches she gave to the house to take off its rawness and newness. It was sad to see the young thing, barely twenty, worse than a widow, going back to her father's house bankrupt in happiness, and with Kenneth's brotherly love for her only compensation. And to risk putting bitterness between them for the sake of the honour of the Oswalds seemed even to the old man now somewhat cruel. In Hugh Carmichael's absence, Mr. Oswald's kindly nature reasserted itself.