r's brow.

"Your way to play your game! Yes; and what has become of mine? You have
destroyed mine, but you think nothing of that. After all that I have
gone through, to have nothing; and through you--my brother! Ah! that is
the hardest of all--when I was putting all things in train for you."

"You are always putting things in train. Leave your trains alone, where
I am concerned."

"But why did you come to that place in the accursed island? I am ruined
by that journey. Yes, I am ruined. You will not help me to get a
shilling from her--not even for my expenses."

"Certainly not. You are clever enough to do your own work without my
aid."

"And is that all from a brother? Well! And, now that they have drowned
themselves--the two Claverings--the fool and the brute, and she can do
what she pleases--"

"She could always do as she pleased since Lord Ongar died."

"Yes; but she is more lonely than ever now. That cousin who is the
greatest fool of all, who might have had every thing--mon Dieu! yes,
every thing--she would have given it all to him with a sweep of her hand
if he would have taken it. He is to marry himself to a little brown girl
who has not a shilling. No one but an Englishman could make follies so
abominable as these. Ah! I am sick--I am sick when I remember it!" And
Sophie gave unmistakable signs of a grief which could hardly have been
self interested. But, in truth, she suffered pain in seeing a good game
spoiled. It was not that she had any wish for Harry Clavering's welfare.
Had he gone to the bottom of the sea in the same boat with his cousins,
the tidings of his fate would have been pleasurable to her rather than
otherwise. But when she saw such cards thrown away as he had held in his
hand, she encountered that sort of suffering which a good player feels
when he sits behind the chair of one who plays up to his adversary's
trump, and makes no tricks of his own kings and aces.

"He may marry himself to the devil if he please--it is nothing to me,"
said the count.

"But she is there--by herself--at that place--what is it called?
Ten--bie. Will you not go now, when you can do no harm?"

"No, I will not go now."

"And in a year she will have taken some other one for her husband."

"What is that to me? But look here, Sophie, far you may as well
understand me at once, if I were ever to think of Lady Ongar again as my
wife, I should not tell you."

"And why not tell me--your sister?"

"Because it wou