"Or your brother?"
"It is not about my brother; it does not in any way concern my family. It is about you."
"About me! Oh, George! do not look at me like that. What is it?"
He was very slow in the telling of the story; slow even in beginning to tell it; indeed, he hardly knew how to begin. "You know Miss Augusta Mildmay?" he asked.
Then she understood it all. She might have told him that he could spare himself all further trouble in telling, only that to do so would hardly have suited her purpose; therefore she had to listen to the story, very slowly told. Miss Augusta Mildmay had written to him begging him to come to her. He, very much astonished at such a request, had nevertheless obeyed it; and Augusta Mildmay had assured him that his wife, by wicked wiles and lures, was interfering between her and her affianced lover Captain De Baron. Mary sat patiently till she had heard it all,—sat almost without speaking a word; but there was a stern look on her face which he had never seen there before. Still he went on with his determined purpose. "These are the kind of things which are being repeated of you," he said at last. "Susanna made the same complaint. And it had reached Brotherton's ears. He spoke to me of it in frightfully strong language. And now this young lady tells me that you are destroying her happiness."
"Well!"
"You can't suppose that I can hear all this without uneasiness."
"Do you believe it?"
"I do not know what to believe. I am driven mad."
"If you believe it, George, if you believe a word of it, I will go away from you. I will go back to papa. I will not stay with you to be doubted."