"Has—has Mr. Etheridge offered himself? Have you had a chance of that happiness, and refused it?"
Hermione, who had been gazing almost sadly at her sister as she spoke the foregoing words, flushed, half angrily, half disdainfully, and answered with sufficient bitterness in her voice:
"Could I accept any man's devotion now! Could I accept even his if it were offered to me? Emma, your memory seems very short, or you have never realized the position in which I stand."
Emma, who had crimsoned as painfully as her sister at that one emphasized word, which suggested so much to both sisters, did not answer for a moment, but when she did her words came with startling distinctness.
"You do me wrong; I not only have realized, to the core of my heart, your position and what it demands, but I have shared it, as you know, and never more than when the question came up as to whether we girls could marry with such a shadow hanging over us."
"Emma, what do you mean?" asked Hermione, rising and confronting her sister, with wide open, astonished eyes. For Emma's appearance was startling, and might well thrill an observer who had never before seen her gentleness disturbed by a passion as great as she herself might feel.
But Emma, at the first sight of this reflection of her own emotions in Hermione's face, calmed her manner, and put a check upon her expression.
"If you do not know," said she, "I had rather not be the one to tell you. But never say again that I do not realize your position."
"Emma, Emma," pursued Hermione, without a change of tone or any diminution in the agitation of her manner to show that she had heard these words, "have you had a lover and I not know it? Did you give up that when——" The elder sister choked; the younger smiled, but with an infinite sadness.
"I should not have spoken of it," said she; "I would not have done so, but that I hoped to influence you to look on this affair with different eyes. I—I believe you ought to embrace this new hope, Hermione. Do but tell him——"