"That's neither here nor there. Whatever she knows or doesn't know, you have only to see them together to observe how well they understand each other. As for Rathborne, no treachery would surprise me in him."
"Frank, I am really shocked at you!" cried his sister. "You have let prejudice run away with your judgment. You dislike Paul Rathborne until you are ready to suspect him of anything. Of course he admires Miss Lynde—everyone does except yourself,—but that is no reason for believing that he would be treacherous to Helen. And Miss Lynde's manner is the same to him as to everyone, so far as I have observed."
"As far as you have observed may not be very far," said Frank, with brotherly candor. "Wait and see—that is all."
"I think you ought to wait and see before you make such charges," returned Miss Morley. "You always disliked Paul Rathborne, and now you dislike Miss Lynde, so you suspect them both of very unworthy conduct. It shows how we ought to guard against disliking people, since to do so leads at last to unjust judgments."
"Very fine moralizing," remarked the young man; "but not at all applicable in this case, since I don't suspect them because I dislike them, but I dislike them because I suspect them. There's all the difference in the world in that."
"It amounts to the same thing with you, I fancy," answered his skeptical sister. "But I hope that at least you will keep your suspicions to yourself. If you breathed them to Helen—"
"Do you think I would!" he said, indignantly. "What good could it do? Helen will believe nothing against any one she loves. And she does love Rathborne—confound him!"
"Frank, you are really growing so uncharitable that it distresses me to hear you talk," said his sister, solemnly.
Frank only responded by a laugh compounded of scorn and vexed amusement; but in his heart he knew that it was true—that he was growing uncharitable, and that he disliked Rathborne so much that he was ready to believe any ill of him. It was this dislike which had sharpened his eyes to perceive what that astute gentleman thought he was concealing from every one—the fact of the strong attraction which Marion had for him; and whoever else that fact might surprise, it did not surprise young Morley in the least. He had never believed in the disinterestedness of Rathborne's affection for Helen, and it had enraged him to perceive the trust with which his cousin gave her heart to a man unworthy of it. These sentiments had prepared him to observe any failure in the conduct of that man, and there had been a gratified sense of the justification of his own judgment when he perceived what was so far hidden from everyone else except Rathborne himself and—Marion.
For Marion was fully alive to the admiration with which Rathborne regarded her; but it is only justice to say that no thought of treachery to Helen was ever in her mind. Many and great as her faults might be, they were not of a mean order. By towering ambition and arrogant pride, she might fall into grievous error, but hardly into baseness—at least not by premeditation. But it is hard to say at exactly what milestone we will stop on the road of seeking the gratification and interest of self. It pleased her to see that Rathborne regarded her in a very different manner from that in which he regarded any other woman with whom she saw him associating; the unconscious homage of his air when he approached her, of his tone when he addressed her, the choice of his subjects when he talked to her alone, were all like incense to her vanity; and it was this incense which she liked, rather than the man. Concerning the latter, she had not changed her first opinion, which did not differ very widely from that of Mr. Frank Morley.