She sat down, violently forcing herself not to listen, not to fear. But the truth was too strong for her.
"Hark! I am sure they are talking. John, you said Edwin promised?"
"Faithfully promised."
"But if, by some accident, Guy found out the truth? Hark! they are talking very loud. That is a chair fallen. Oh, John—don't keep me! My boys—my boys." And she ran up-stairs in an agony.
What a sight for a mother's eyes. Two brothers of whom it had been our boast that from babyhood they had never been known to lift a hand against each other—now struggling together like Cain and Abel. And from the fury in their faces, the quarrel might have had a similar ending.
"Guy!—Edwin!" But the mother might as well have shrieked to the winds.
The father came and parted them. "Boys, are you gone mad? fighting like brutes in this way. Shame, Guy! Edwin, I trusted you."
"I could not help it, father. He had no right to steal into my room; no right to snatch her letter from me."
"It was her letter, then?" cried Guy, furiously. "She writes to you? You were writing back to her?"
Edwin made no answer; but held out his hand for the letter, with that look of white passion in him so rarely seen—perhaps not thrice since his infancy. Guy took no heed.