"Impossible--you cannot mean it," she said with her customary
impetuosity. She glanced into Hugh's face, and misread what she saw
there. Then she began to laugh; at first lightly, afterward rather
boisterously, and said with head averted, and almost as if talking to
herself, "No, no; he is nothing to me but the man I love."

"Do you then love him?"

Greta started.

"Do you ask?" she said. The amazement in the wide eyes had deepened to a
look of rapture. "Love him?" she said; "better than all the world
beside." The girl was lifted out of herself. "You are to be my brother,
Hugh, and I need not fear to speak so."

She swung her bonnet on her arm, just to preserve composure by some
distracting exercise.

Hugh Ritson stopped, and his face softened. It was a perplexing smile
that sat on his features. While he had talked with Greta there had run
through his mind, as a painful undertone, the thought of Mercy Fisher.
He had now dismissed the last of his qualms respecting her. To be tied
down for life to a mindless piece of physical prettiness--what man of
brains could bear it? He had yielded to a natural impulse--true! That
moment of temptation threatened painful consequences--still true! What
then? Nothing! Was the dead fruit to hang about his neck forever?
Tut!--all natural law was against it. Had he not said that he was above
prejudice? So was he above the maudlin sentiment of the "great lovers of
noble histories." The sophistry grew apace with Greta's beautiful
countenance before him. Catching at her last word, he said:

"Your brother--yes. But did you never guess that I could have wished
another name?"

The look of amazement returned to her eyes; he saw it and went on:

"Is it possible that you have not read my secret?"

"What secret?" she said in a half-smothered voice.

"Greta, if your love had been great love, you must have read my secret
just as I have read yours." In a low tone he continued: "Long ago I knew
that you loved, or thought you loved, my brother. I saw it before he had
seen it--before you had realized it."

The red glow colored her cheeks more deeply than before. She had
stopped, and he was tramping nervously backward and forward.

"Greta," he said again, and he fixed his eyes entreatingly upon her,
"what is the love that scarcely knows itself?--that is the love with
which you love my brother. And what is the tame, timid passion of a man
of no mind?--that is the love which he offers you. Wh