e should n't speak against Felix."

"Felix is good," Charlotte answered, softly but promptly. "Felix is very
wonderful. Only he is so different. Mr. Brand is much nearer to us. I
should never think of going to Felix with a trouble--with a question.
Mr. Brand is much more to us, Gertrude."

"He is very--very good," Gertrude repeated. "He is more to you; yes,
much more. Charlotte," she added suddenly, "you are in love with him!"

"Oh, Gertrude!" cried poor Charlotte; and her sister saw her blushing in
the darkness.

Gertrude put her arm round her. "I wish he would marry you!" she went
on.

Charlotte shook herself free. "You must not say such things!" she
exclaimed, beneath her breath.

"You like him more than you say, and he likes you more than he knows."

"This is very cruel of you!" Charlotte Wentworth murmured.

But if it was cruel Gertrude continued pitiless. "Not if it 's true,"
she answered. "I wish he would marry you."

"Please don't say that."

"I mean to tell him so!" said Gertrude.

"Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude!" her sister almost moaned.

"Yes, if he speaks to me again about myself. I will say, 'Why don't you
marry Charlotte? She 's a thousand times better than I.'"

"You are wicked; you are changed!" cried her sister.

"If you don't like it you can prevent it," said Gertrude. "You can
prevent it by keeping him from speaking to me!" And with this she walked
away, very conscious of what she had done; measuring it and finding a
certain joy and a quickened sense of freedom in it.

Mr. Wentworth was rather wide of the mark in suspecting that Clifford
had begun to pay unscrupulous compliments to his brilliant cousin; for
the young man had really more scruples than he received credit for in
his family. He had a certain transparent shamefacedness which was
in itself a proof that he was not at his ease in dissipation. His
collegiate peccadilloes had aroused a domestic murmur as disagreeable
to the young man as the creaking of his boots would have been to a
house-breaker. Only, as the house-breaker would have simplified matters
by removing his chaussures, it had seemed to Clifford that the shortest
cut to comfortable relations with people--relations which should make
him cease to think that when they spoke to him they meant something
improving--was to renounce all ambition toward a nefarious development.
And, in fact, Clifford's ambition took the most commendable form. He
thought of himself in the future as