CHAPTER XX
A LETTER FROM HUGH
HUGH went away that same day. He was going to Net-amen, together with the gorgeous retinue which had, as it were, sprung up round him and escorted him everywhere. Queen Maat-kha did not accompany him this time: she was unprepared for the journey, she said. She would proceed to Tanis alone, there to meet him for the wedding ceremony.
Hugh took a very brief farewell of me. I could see that he dared not trust himself to speak, and, even before me, he shrank from breaking down. I could not go with him, for my patient demanded my immediate attention. He was undoubtedly worse since this morning: the strong emotion had done him an infinity of harm. Yet I was torn between my affection for Hugh and my duty to the sick man. It seemed to me that Hugh needed my care as much as the sick Pharaoh. His sufferings were mental, but I felt that they were keen. And did I not love him as much as my prosy nature was capable of loving? and did I not know him, and his ardent, passionate nature, forcibly hardened by years of dry, scientific research, all the more ready to fall a prey to strong impressions, such as the strange and fascinating girl had undoubtedly made upon it?
Hugh had never been in love. During his early youth he had had no opportunity of meeting any woman who would appeal to his keen sense of the mystic and the picturesque. Such women are rare in Western Europe, and none had come across the
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