“The relations between us are peculiar,” he said at last, speaking more slowly and deliberately than was usual with him. “I wonder if I could tell you what they are. I wonder if you would believe me, or think me sane, if I should tell you. Sometime I shall tell you, Penelope, for you are a broad-minded, strong-souled woman and you will be able to see that what I am doing has been for the best good of everybody concerned. But I think not now. No, not yet, not till after I have worked out my plan. But I want you to know, Penelope, and I shall never be content until you do understand. For I honor and admire you more than anyone else I know. If I didn’t, perhaps my feeling about Felix wouldn’t be quite so strong. And I’ll try to curb my tongue when I speak about him to you.”
Penelope had begun to feel much wearied by the interview, with its demands upon her emotional strength and the strange, tingling excitement with which Gordon’s presence wrought upon her nerves, just as it had done at their previous meeting.
His compelling personality, that had burst so unexpectedly and so intimately into her life, inspired in her the wish to believe in him. But his bitterness toward her brother, notwithstanding their evident intimacy, made her hesitate. He seemed so sincere and so straightforward that her impulse was to meet him with equal frankness. But she was still a little doubtful, a little fearful.
She felt that she must know more about the mysterious relation, with its apparent contradictions, between him and Felix before she could give him the confidence he seemed to desire.
“It is all very strange,” she said, “and after you are gone I shall wonder whether I have been dreaming or whether some one named ‘Hugh Gordon’ has really been here saying such bitter things about my brother. Does he know that you have such a poor opinion of him?”
“Does he know it?” Gordon exclaimed, facing her impulsively and speaking with emphasis. “Indeed he does! He knows just how much I—but there! I promised to bridle my tongue. Well, he has had a great deal more information upon that head than you have!”
“Well, then, I’ll have to forgive you the hard things you’ve said about him to me, since you’ve been just as frank with him first!”
“Thank you! But you know they are all true, Penelope!”
She drew back, a little offended that he should insist a second time upon this point, and there was a touch of scornfulness in her tones as she rejoined with dignity:
“I do not deny that my brother has faults, but is that any reason why I should discuss them with a stranger?”