"Well then, what does all this secrecy mean? Has Clarice spoken to you? What does Mabel know?"
"She knows no more than you and I, brother. Something has happened: any one may suspect what it is, but Clarice will not tell. I love and respect her too much to ask: so does Mabel; and so, I hope, do you."
"Well, it's confounded hard lines, Jane, to have these things happening in your own house, and such a mystery made of it." I had to grumble to somebody, you see, if only to keep up appearances and help hide my guilty secret; and then I was bored, and worse, with the way things had gone.
"You took that risk, Robert, when you brought them together here. Did you expect that two such persons as they would agree easily and at once? I think they love each other, or were in a way to it when this occurred, whatever it was."
"Well, I am awfully sorry. Clarice can take care of herself, I suppose; but as for Hartman, he had load enough to carry before. I love that man, Jane."
"So do I, Robert."
"Eh? O, the devil you do!" This came out before I could stop it. It did not please her.
"Brother, you are simply scandalous. Will you never learn a decent respect for women—you with a wife of your own, and boys growing up? Where have you been to acquire such ideas and such manners? You might have lived in the woods instead of Mr. Hartman, and he might have been bred in courts, compared with you.—I mean, of course, that I am interested in him, and sorry for him, as we all are. He is your friend, and he has excellent qualities."
I was somewhat cast down by all this browbeating. Where shall a man go for gentle sympathy and that sort of thing, if not to his own sister? I suppose she thought of this, for she went on more kindly. "I would say nothing to Clarice if I were you. When she is ready, she will speak—to you."
"To me, eh? What would she do that for?" I put this in as part of the narrative, but I am not proud of it. I had not quite recovered yet from the effect of Jane's previous violence; and then my intellect is not equal to all these feminine convolutions.