Probably reading as much in her expression, D’Almayne began—
“You will at once understand why I have thus presumed upon my privilege as an old friend, when I tell you that I have just met, and had a long, and I hope not entirely profitless, conversation with your brother.”
“With Fred!” exclaimed Kate, colouring with mingled surprise and annoyance, for D’Almayne was about the last person to whom she desired to confide her family troubles.
D’Almayne read her thoughts.
“Your brother,” he said, in a tone expressive of wounded feeling, “your brother, entertaining no unkind suspicions of my friendly interest, unhesitatingly confided to me the dilemma in which his inexperience has placed him, and which his want of knowledge of the world has magnified into something much more alarming than it really is. So I obtained his permission to speak to you on the subject, promising, if he would allow me to do so, that between us we should very soon devise means to relieve him from his difficulties.”
“I’m afraid then you have only prepared a fresh disappointment for the poor boy,” returned Kate. “Did he not tell you that he had already applied to me, and that I was so unfortunate as to be unable to render him any effectual assistance?”
“Surely a word from you to Mr. Crane would remove all difficulty? Believe me, you are the only person who could for a moment doubt the effect of such an appeal;” and, as he spoke, D’Almayne fixed his dark, piercing eyes upon her, as though he would read her very soul.
For a moment Kate looked down in confusion and annoyance; then her spirit rose, and calmly returning his glance, she replied—
“My brother, no doubt, wished to spare me pain, by concealing from you that I have already applied to Mr. Crane; but that, irritated against poor Fred, and vexed by the loss of this ship, my husband refused my request.”
Smarting under Mr. Crane’s unkindness, anxious and unhappy about her brother, provoked at Fred’s imprudence in admitting Horace D’Almayne to his confidence, yet clinging to the hope that her companion’s tact and knowledge of life might devise some means of extricating her brother from his difficulties, Kate forgot her usual caution, and spoke eagerly and hastily.