s
of it with myself.'

The words were said so lightly, they betrayed so clearly the speaker's
conviction that she had made a foolish mistake, that they stung Kendal to
the quick. How could Marie have known? Had not his letters for the last
three months been misleading enough to deceive the sharpest eyes? And yet
he felt unreasonably that she ought to have known--there was a blind
clamour in him against the bluntness of her sisterly perception.

His silence was so prolonged that Madame de Chateauvieux was startled by
it. She slipped her hand into his arm. 'Eustace!' Still no answer. 'Have
I said anything to annoy you--Eustace? Won't you let your old sister have
her dreams?'

But still it seemed impossible for him to speak. He could only lay his
hand over hers with a brotherly clasp. By this time they were at the foot
of the stairs, and he led the way up, Madame de Chateauvieux following in
a tumult of anxious conjecture. When they reached his rooms he put her
carefully into a chair by the fire, made her take some sandwiches, and
set the kettle to boil in his handy bachelor way, that he might make her
some tea, and all the time he talked about various nothings, till at last
Marie, unable to put up with it any longer, caught his hand as he was
bending over the fire.

'Eustace,' she exclaimed, 'be kind to me, and don't perplex me like
this.--Oh, my poor old boy, are you in love with Isabel Bretherton?'

'He drew himself to his full height on the rug, and gazed steadily into
the fire, the lines of his mobile face settling into repose.

'Yes,' he said, as though to himself; 'I love her. I believe I have loved
her from the first moment.'

Madame de Chateauvieux was tremblingly silent, her thoughts travelling
back over the past with lightning rapidity. Could she remember one word,
one look of Isabel Bretherton's, of which her memory might serve to throw
the smallest ray of light on this darkness in which Eustace seemed to be
standing? No, not one. Gratitude, friendship, esteem--all these had been
there abundantly, but nothing else, not one of those many signs by which
one woman betrays her love to another! She rose and put her arm round her
brother's neck. They had been so much to one another for nearly forty
years; he had never wanted anything as a child or youth that she had not
tried to get for him. How strange, how intolerable, that this toy, this
boon, was beyond her getting!

Her mute sympathy and her deep distre