is case,"
said the elder brother somewhat stiffly.

"I can go now," Winifred said rising, and speaking with a
trembling lip and a tremulous voice, -- "if you want to talk
about anything."

She lit a candle and had got to the door, when her other
brother said,

"Winnie! --"

Winnie stopped and turned with the door in her hand. Winthrop
was busy clearing some books and papers from a chair by his
side. He did not speak again; when he had done he looked up
and towards her; and obeying the wish of his face, as she
would have done had it been any other conceivable thing,
Winnie shut the door, set her candle down, and came and took
the chair beside him. But then, when she felt his arm put
round her, she threw her head down upon him and burst into a
fit of nervously passionate tears. _That_ was not his wish, she
knew, but she could not help it.

"Mr. Landholm," said Winthrop, "may I trouble you to put out
that candle. We are not so extravagant here as to burn
bedlights till we want them. -- Hush, Winnie, --" softly said
his voice in her ear and his arm at the same time.

"Absurd!" said Rufus, getting up to do as he was bid.

"What?" said his brother.

"Why I really want to talk to you."

"I am really very willing to listen."

"But I do not want to talk to anybody beside you."

"Winnie hears everything that is said here, Will," said the
younger brother gravely, at the same time restraining with his
arm the motion he felt Winnie made to go.

"It don't signify!" said Rufus, getting up and beginning to
walk up and down the room gloomily.

"What doesn't signify?"

"Anything! --"

The steps were quicker and heavier, with concealed feeling.
Winthrop looked at him and was silent; while Rufus seemed to
be combating some unseen grievance, by the set of his lip and
nostril.

"What do you think Haye has done?" -- he broke out, like a
horse that is champing the bit.

"What?" said Winthrop.

"He has sued me."

"Sued you!" exclaimed Winthrop, while even Winnie forgot her
tears and started up. Rufus walked.

"What do you mean, Will?"

"I mean he has sued me!" -- said Rufus stopping short and
facing them with eyes that for the moment had established a
natural pyrotechny of their own.

"How, and what for?"

"How? -- by the usual means! What for? -- I will tell you!"

Which he sat down to do; Winthrop and Winnie both his most
earnest auditors.

"You know it was Haye's own proposition, urged by himself,
tha