“Why did you lie to that man?” he asked fiercely. “How dared you do yourself this injustice?”
“I did it for her sake,” she answered. “It may be her salvation. I believe that he will marry her.”
“You would let him—knowing—all that you know?”
“Why not? She is my flesh and blood. She is more dear to me than anything else. Perhaps if I had watched over her more closely, things would have been different.”
“You! Why, you have been an angel to her,” he exclaimed impatiently. “You know very well that she is selfish and pleasure-loving to the backbone. You have made enough sacrifices for her surely without this. Besides, you cannot tell where it will end. You have taken upon your shoulders the burden of her misdeeds. You may have to carry them further and longer than you think. Oh, it is unbearable.”
The man’s face was dark with passion. It was as though he were personally aggrieved. His tone was rough, almost threatening. The girl only smiled at him serenely, but she laid her hand for a moment quietly upon his.
“Dear friend,” she said, “this is a matter which you must leave to me to do as I think best. Annabel is my only sister, you know, almost my only relative. If I do not look after her, she has no one. And she is very young, younger than her years.”
It was significant of her influence over him that he answered her calmly, although a storm of angry thoughts were struggling for expression within him.
“Look after her! Why not? But you have done it all your life. You have been her guardian angel. But even you cannot alter her character. Annabel was born soulless, a human butterfly, if ever there was one. The pursuit of pleasure, self-gratification, is an original instinct with her. Blood and bone, body and spirit, she is selfish through and through. Even you have not been able to hold her back. I speak no harm of her. She is your sister, and God knows I wish her none. But——”
A look checked him.