“I won’t be satisfied with that if I can get you to tell me any more,” she answered, simply. “I don’t pretend that I’m not anxious to know more; but it is not out of curiosity to learn other people’s affairs, but because there really must be something peculiarly interesting about a secret which causes your own relations to speak ill of you.”
Olivia had suddenly made up her mind for a bold stroke. It cannot be denied that there was a little malice in her heart; but it was a small matter compared with her real anxiety to put him on his guard against one whom she considered a treacherous friend.
“My relations!” he echoed, with a look of such bewilderment and incredulity that she began to think he would not believe her.
“Isn’t a sister-in-law a kind of relation?” asked Olivia, rather unsteadily, after a pause.
Mr. Brander’s expression changed to one of pain and fear; so that Olivia watched him in terror, not daring to go on. He looked at her without answering, and then, as she remained silent and fearful, he got up and walked to the other side of the little room, where, as her face was turned towards the fireplace, she could not see him; but she knew without the aid of her eyes, that he was much agitated; and when he came back and, standing by her chair, put his hand gently on her shoulder and spoke to her with calmness which might have passed for unconcern, she was not deceived by it.
“And what ill does my sister-in-law say of me?” he asked.
“She told my step-mother an old story, and said you were not a proper acquaintance for—young girls.”
“Oh, she said that, did she?” returned Mr. Brander, in a measured voice. Then he said, abruptly, after a silence, “You are sure of this?”
“Quite sure.”
Then it appeared to the girl that he stood beside her without a word for a very long time. For the fire seemed to die down, and the murky light outside to fade perceptibly, before he even changed his attitude. At last she found courage to look up timidly into his face, and saw that his eyes were staring towards the window with the blind look of a seer whose vision is only keen for the fancies and phantoms in his own mind. And Mr. Brander’s fancies must have been of the gloomiest kind, for his face startled the girl into uttering a little exclamation, which roused him from his abstraction, and woke him to the fact that his hand had been laying all this time on the young girl’s shoulder.