“You are her sister, and could not say that which was false,” he said simply. “Tell me, then, is this all true?”
“Do you doubt me?” she asked, looking full in his eyes.
He held her hands, and looked down in the dark, handsome face that gazed so unflinchingly in his.
“No,” he said softly, “no;” and raising one of her hands to his lips, he kissed it, and then turned and left the place.
Marie’s reverie, as she stood there holding one soft hand pressed over the back of the other, where Marcus Glen’s lips had been, was interrupted by the voice of Clotilde.
“Rie: has he gone?”
“Yes,” said her sister, with a look of disgust, almost loathing, in her face.
“Poor boy! I hope he won’t mind much. I say, Rie, you can have him now. I’ll make you a present of his love. No, I won’t,” she said, flashing into life. “You shan’t look at him. If you do, I’ll tell him such things about you as shall drive him away.”
The sisters stood there upon the stairs gazing angrily one at the other, and Ruth, whose heart felt very sore, watched them in turn, and thought how hard all this was for Captain Glen, and also, with a sigh, how weak he must be.
“But they are both so handsome,” she said to herself half aloud; and then, with a kind of shiver, she began to think about Mr Montaigne.