“How do you mean?” he asked eagerly.
“That you have no cause for all this despair. You are a young man still; your health may improve; you are free from debt, and have enough to live upon. Whatever disagreeables your position has, it is a beginning—you may rise. A long and prosperous career may lie before you yet—I hope so.”
“Do you?”
Max, I trembled. For he looked at her as he used to look when they were young. And it seems so hard to believe that love ever can die out. I thought, what if this exceeding calmness of my sister's should be only the cloak which pride puts on to hide intolerable pain?—But I was mistaken. And now I marvel, not that he, but that I—who know my sister as a sister ought—could for an instant have seen in those soft sad eyes anything beyond what her words expressed the more plainly, as they were such extremely kind and gentle words.
Francis came closer, and said something in a low voice, of which I caught only the last sentence,—
“Penelope, will you trust me again?”
I would have slipped away—but my sister detained me; tightly her fingers closed on mine; but she answered Francis composedly:
“I do not quite comprehend you.”
“Will you forgive and forget? will you marry me?”
“Francis!” I exclaimed, indignantly; but Penelope put her hand upon my mouth.