“Yes,” answered Cicely. Then, after a pause, “Your brother was much older than I.”
“Oh, Jack was young!”
“I don’t mean that he was really old, he hadn’t gray hair. But he was thirty-one when we were married, and I was sixteen.”
“I suppose no one forced you to marry him?” said the sister, the flash returning to her eyes.
“Oh, yes.”
“Nonsense!”
“I mean he did—Jack himself did. I thought that perhaps you would feel so.”
“Feel how?”
“Why, that we made him—that we tried, or that I tried. And so I have brought some of his letters to show you.” She took a package from her pocket and laid it on the mantelpiece. “You needn’t return them; you can burn them after reading.”
“Oh, probably,” answered Eve, incoherently. She felt choked with her anger and grief.