“Mamma, what have you been saying to him?” cried Emberance vehemently and rather disrespectfully.
“Nothing, I assure you, that he did not know before. He only expressed his sympathy with us, and said that your unconsciousness of any wrong couldn’t hide how well you were fitted—in short, one couldn’t help seeing that he thought you would make a much better heiress than Kate.”
Emberance stood for a moment with her hat in her hand.
“Then,” she said, with much emphasis, “he is worse than any villain in a book.”
She walked away without further explanation, and Major Clare vanished from the lives of Emberance and Katharine Kingsworth.
He returned to India still unmarried,—still faithful, his brother said, to his first love. And perhaps he was so, but his efforts to replace her, and his love of producing an impression had made a crisis in the life and in the character of the two Kingsworth cousins.