n a chap
like Poynter was jolly, and forced champagne on me. I was as proud as
you are once, but my pride's about all gone!"

"Hush! I will not hear you speak like that, Hendon, my own darling
brother! For Janet's sake--"

"She's nothing to me now. I was thrown over for some other fellow."

"How dare you, sir! You know it is not true! Dear Janet! Working
daily like a slave, and offering me her hard earnings when we were so
pressed."

"Did she--did she?" cried Hendon excitedly, and with his pale face
flushing up.

"There," cried Richmond half-laughingly, half-scornfully, "confess, sir,
that a lying spirit was on your lips. Say you believe that of Janet and
that you do not still love her, if you dare!"

Hendon Chartley let his head fall into his hands, and bent down, with
his shoulders heaving with the emotion he could not conceal, while his
sister bent over him and laid her hand upon his head.

He started up at her touch, seized and kissed her hand, and then, going
to the side of the room, he laid his arm against the panel and his brow
upon it, to stand talking there.

"I can't help it, Rich dear," he groaned; "I feel like a brute beast
sometimes, and as if I can never look her in the face again. I've
drunk; I've gone wild in a kind of despair; and Poynter seems to have
been always by me to egg me on, and get me under his thumb."

"My own brother!"

"Don't touch me, dear. I can't stop here. I'll do as Mark Heath did,
and if Janet'll wait, perhaps some day I may come back to her a better
man, and she may forgive me."

There was a pause.

"I don't believe anything of her but what is good and true; God bless
her for a little darling--Why, Rich!"

He turned sharply, for a low moan had escaped his sister, and he found
that she had sunk into a chair, and was sobbing bitterly, with her face
in her hands.

"Rich darling, I did not mean it. What have I said?"

"Nothing, nothing, dear; only you--you must not leave me."

"But Mark Heath--Ah! what a fool I am!" he cried, catching his sister in
his arms. "I did not think what I was saying; and, Rich dear, hold up,
I don't believe the dear old boy is dead."

"Hush, Hendon dear," said Richmond, mastering her emotion; "I want--I
want to talk to you about Mr Poynter."

"Yes, all right. Sit down, dear, and I won't be such a fool."

"You must not leave me."

"I won't. I'll stop and fight it out like a man. And as for James
Poynter, I wish I hadn't