“She wants no arousing. She is lying ill in bed, sleepless in her misery, sir, with her wretched brother staying out like this.”
“Confound you for a silly old woman!” he cried angrily. “Is a man to live the life of a hermit? If I had been away to a patient till breakfast-time nobody would have said a word. Poor little Laury! But how absurd!”
“Absurd, sir!” cried the old lady, who was scarlet with indignation. “Then I suppose it was absurd for poor Isabel Lee to have gone home broken-hearted because of your conduct.”
“What!” he cried, springing up, with a glimmer of memory coming back. “Why, surely you two did not canvass my being out one night till the poor girl was so upset that she—that she—went back—yes, she was stopping here. Oh, aunt, your foolish, suspicious ways are disgraceful. What have you done?”
“I done, you wretched boy? It’s what have you done? She was with us for a whole week after you had gone, fighting against me, and insisting that there was a reason for your being away, or that you had had an accident.”
“Here, aunt, are you going to be ill?” he cried, catching at her wrist; but she snatched it away.
“Don’t touch me, sir!” she cried. “Oh, Fred, Fred! I’d have given the world not to know that you were so wicked. And just when you were about to marry her, poor girl, to go away as you did.”
“Go away—as I did?” he faltered, gazing at her blankly.
“Yes, I knew something was wrong when I saw that wretched woman’s face. I felt it; but I could not have believed you would be so base. A whole fortnight too; and to think that this was to have been your wedding-day!”
He caught her by the shoulders, and she uttered a faint cry and dropped the candlestick, as he stood swaying to and fro, staring at the doorway, through which his sister hesitatingly passed, and came slowly toward him.