"I am glad to be able to add to your pleasure in any way," she answers, with a kind of careless joy. "Possibly I may add to your displeasure. May I make a confession?" and she smiles again.
"To me?" not caring to conceal his surprise.
"Yes, to you. I shall bind you by all manner of promises, but the murder must out."
"Is it as grave as that?"
"Yes. If you had not gone by the heats and caprices of youthful passion, you would be less able to extend your mantle of charity. I care enough for your good opinion and for that of your family not to be placed in a false light by the imprudence of youth,—shall we call it that?"
"I cannot imagine," he begins, puzzled, and yet almost afraid to trench on this suspicious ground.
"Can you not? Then I give the young man credit for a degree of prudence I was fearful he did not possess."
"Oh," he says, with a curious sense of relief, "you mean—my brother?"
"Floyd," in a low, confidential tone, and she so rarely gives him his Christian name that he is struck with her beautiful utterance of it, "I want you to do me this justice at least, to let me stand higher in your estimation than that of a mere silly coquette, who makes a bid for the admiration of men in general. There was a time when it might have turned my head a little, but then I had no general admiration to tempt me. I have been friendly with Eugene, as any woman so much older might be, and the regard he has for me is not love at all, but just now he cannot see the difference. He feels bitter because he cannot have matters as he fancies he would like, and in a few years he will be most grateful for the cruelty, as he calls it."
"Oh," Floyd says, with a sense of shame, "he certainly has not been foolish enough to——"