CHAPTER XXVI.
"FREE!"
"And what if I refuse to tell her this?" said Wyvis Brand.
"Then I shall tell her myself."
"And break your word to me?"
"And break my word."
He stood looking at her for a minute in silence, and then an ironical smile curled his lip as he turned aside.
"Women are all alike," he said. "They cannot possibly hold their tongues. I thought you were superior to most of your sex. I remember that your father once spoke of you to me as 'his faithful Janet.' Is this your faithfulness?"
"Yes, it is, it is," she cried; and then, sitting down, she suddenly burst into tears. She was unnerved and agitated, and so she wept, as girls will weep—for nothing at all sometimes, and sometimes in the very crisis of their fate.
Wyvis looked on, uncomprehending, a little touched, though rather against his will, by Janetta's tears. He knew that she did not often cry. He waited for the paroxysm to pass—waited grimly, but with "compunctuous visitings." And presently he was rewarded for his patience. She dried her eyes, lifted up her head, and spoke.