or their
gracious kindliness--set themselves in lines which altered them almost
beyond recognition; but his voice was not without some of its natural
sweetness, as, after a long and hollow look at the other's composed
countenance, he abruptly exclaimed:

"Speak! I am bound to listen; you are my brother."

Orlando turned towards Doris. She was slipping away.

"Don't go," said he.

But she was gone.

Slowly he turned back.

Oswald raised his hand and checked the words with which he would have
begun his story.

"Never mind the beginnings," said he. "Doris has told all that. You
saw Miss Challoner in Lenox--admired her--offered yourself to her and
afterwards wrote her a threatening letter because she rejected you."

"It is true. Other men have followed just such unworthy impulses--and
been ashamed and sorry afterwards. I was sorry and I was ashamed, and as
soon as my first anger was over went to tell her so. But she mistook my
purpose and--"

"And what?"

Orlando hesitated. Even his iron nature trembled before the misery he
saw--a misery he was destined to augment rather than soothe. With pains
altogether out of keeping with his character, he sought in the recesses
of his darkened mind for words less bitter and less abrupt than those
which sprang involuntarily to his lips. But he did not find them. Though
he pitied his brother and wished to show that he did, nothing but the
stern language suitable to the stern fact he wished to impart, would
leave his lips.

"And ended the pitiful struggle of the moment with one quick,
unpremeditated blow," was what he said. "There is no other explanation
possible for this act, Oswald. Bitter as it is for me to acknowledge it,
I am thus far guilty of this beloved woman's death. But, as God hears
me, from the moment I first saw her, to the moment I saw her last, I did
not know, nor did I for a moment dream that she was anything to you
or to any other man of my stamp and station. I thought she despised
my country birth, my mechanical attempts, my lack of aristocratic
pretensions and traditions."

"Edith?"

"Now that I know she had other reasons for her contempt--that the words
she wrote were in rebuke to the brother rather than to the man, I feel
my guilt and deplore my anger. I cannot say more. I should but insult
your grief by any lengthy expressions of regret and sorrow."

A groan of intolerable anguish from the sick man's lips, and then the
quick thrust of his re-awake