"I know; I know. And I am only a cousin, a mere nobody. But I love the child, and I must speak. You will hate me for it, perhaps, but why has Marian been here?"
"Tita asked her."
"Is that the whole truth?"
"No; the half," says Sir Maurice. He rouses himself from the lethargy into which he has fallen, and looks at Margaret. "I promised Marian an invitation here; I asked Tita for that invitation later. Marian came. I believed there would be harm in her coming, and I steeled myself against it. I tell you, Margaret—I tell you, and you only—that when she came the harm—was—well"—straightening himself—"there was no harm. All at once I found I did not care. My love for her seemed dead. It was terrible, but it was the fact; I seemed to care for nothing—nothing at all. Margaret, believe me, it was all dead. I tell you this, that the night when I discovered that, I longed for death as a solution of my misery. To care for nothing—nothing!"
"There was something," says Margaret. "There was Tita!"
"Was there?"
"Certainly there was."
"She has proved it," says Rylton, breaking into a sort of heart-broken mirth.
"She is angry now," says Margaret eagerly. "She is very naturally—unhinged; and she has been told——"
"By my mother?"