"Since he has ceased to pay them," retorted Blanche.
Violet smiled a scornful smile.
Neither spoke for a few minutes.
"I have a great mind to ascend the ladder," said the impatient Cecil to himself, and see if it is only womanly weakness which detains her."
"Can they have been detected?" Captain Heath asked himself for the twentieth time.
"Blanche," said Violet at last, "you greatly misunderstand me; but what is worse, you greatly misunderstand him. Listen!"
She then narrated the whole of her episode with Cecil: her first yearnings towards him—her interest, and almost love; then the scene at the Grange; his conduct in the affair with the bull; she recalled to Blanche the mutual coldness which must have been observed until after Cecil's confession respecting his cowardice, which so far cleared him in her eyes, that she was amiable to him for the rest of the evening; she then told her of reflections made that night when alone, and the result to which she had arrived, and concluded by saying:—
"I am most willing to admit his fascinating manners, his varied accomplishments, and some good qualities; but he is weak, selfish, and capricious. He is not a proper husband for you, the more so as he is poor, and has not the character which will enable him to battle with the world. Rich, he would not make you a good husband; poor, he will be a curse to you, and throw the blame of his misery upon you."
Blanche remained perfectly quiet during this dissection of her lover's character, and not a change in her countenance betrayed that it had in the least affected her. Nor had it. Perfectly incredulous, she listened to her sister, seeing only the distortion of prejudice in her language.
"Have you finished, Violet?" she quietly asked.