Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.
"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."
Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger against the man seized him, and he frowned.
"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given you up!" said he, ferociously.
"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"
"Well, then, I'll tell you. He is off his head. He has got mixed up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with for half an hour, and—and—and—well, they say—the people say he's done something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"
He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her hands. Then she said in a whisper:
"You don't mean—murder?"
Her brother's silence gave her the answer.
There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her breath: