“Thank you, George; I am very glad you are in town,” said she, smiling; “but I won’t trespass upon your kindness so much as that. I am afraid Harry isn’t worth the determination; but I am not going to give him a loophole for complaint of me again.”
“But he couldn’t be jealous of me,” said George, with eager surprise. “You can’t bury yourself alive for the sake of a man who is deceiving you, who writes to say he is getting on badly”—Annie had told him that, but without saying anything about the money she had sent—“and whom you see a week after on horseback on a race-course enjoying himself as if he were rich. It isn’t as if I were one of your handsome actors——”
“You are too modest, George. You are handsomer than any actor I know.”
“Handsomer than——”
“Oh, yes; he is quite ugly! That was the hardest blow of all to Harry,” said she, laughing. “But, handsome or ugly, Harry shall never have the least reason to be jealous again.”
“Are you so sure of yourself?” asked George softly. “You know,” he continued diffidently, “you thought you were quite cold and safe before.”
“I have a safeguard now,” said she in a low voice. “In spite of all that he has done—and you have not heard the worst—I love Harry; his forbearance to me when I was in the wrong seems to have subdued me; and nothing in this world now, not even brilliant success on the stage, has so much charm for me as the hope of some day winning him back to me.”
“I hope you will, Annie—I hope you will. You deserve the greatest happiness the world can give, and Harry would be a fool not to snatch at what many a man will envy him for.”
Annie did not want him to grow sentimental, and she soon turned the conversation to other matters.
She had a firm friend now in her eldest brother-in-law, whom she knew how to manage, and to whom, in this time of his ruin and consequent troubles, she did infinite service by her sympathy and encouragement. She could not, even if she had wished to do so, prevent his coming to see her constantly; for, though a man accustomed to depend upon himself in a struggle, he could find no consolation, now that the struggle was over, so great as his sister-in-law’s sweet voice and kind eyes.