The Doctor sighed.
"What has not Emma had to bear," he said.
"Emma!" Frank unconsciously roused himself. "If I remember rightly, Hermione has said that Emma did not know all her trouble."
"Thank God! May she never be enlightened."
"Edgar," whispered Frank, "I do not think I can let you read all that letter, though it tells much you ought to know. I have yet some consideration—for—for Hermione—" (How hard the word came from lips which once uttered it with so much pride!)—"and she never expected any other eyes than mine to rest upon these revelations of her heart of hearts. But one thing I must tell you in justice to yourself and the girl upon whom no shadow rests but that of a most loyal devotion to a most wretched sister. Not from her heart did the refusal come which blighted your hopes and made you cynical towards women. There were reasons she could not communicate, reasons she could not even dwell upon herself, why she felt forced to dismiss you, and in the seemingly heartless way she did."
"I am willing to believe it," said Edgar.
"Emma is a pure and beautiful spirit," observed Frank, and gave himself up to grief for her who was not, and yet who commanded his pity for her sufferings and possibly for her provocations.
Edgar now had enough of his own to think of, and if Frank had been less absorbed in his own trouble he might have observed with what longing eyes his friend turned every now and then towards the sheets which contained so much of Emma's history as well as her sister's. Finally he spoke:
"Why does Emma remain in the house to which the father only condemned her sister?"
"Because she once vowed to share that sister's fate, whatever it might be."