"It is because I love Vanno that I had to speak so," Angelo persisted, not softening at all. "I am his elder brother. Soon, I fear, I shall be the head of our house. It is my duty to protect him."
"Against me?"
"Against you—if you make it necessary."
"I told you and I tell you again," Mary cried in exasperation, "that I have done nothing wrong. There's nothing in my 'past' to confess. If I haven't talked much to Vanno about it, that's because there was so much else to say."
"How old are you, Miss Grant?" Angelo put the question abruptly.
"Twenty-five," she replied without hesitation, though puzzled at the seeming irrelevance.
"Ah! I happen to know that Vanno believes you to be under twenty."
"I never said so. I would have told him my age if I had thought of it."
"He spoke of you to me, before we met, as a 'child not yet past her teens, and just out of a convent-school.' How long do you say it is since you were a pupil at that convent, where I believe you admit having been—St. Ursula-of-the-Lake, in Scotland?"
"It's almost four years since I was a pupil, but——" She checked herself in haste. In another instant she would have said a thing which might have opened the eyes of Marie's husband on some dim vision of the truth.