“Oh, Hartley, don’t talk like that!” cried Mary, with a sob. “My own dear, noble, self-denying brother.”
“Hush, hush! Mary!” he said sadly; “it has all been wrong, and here is the result!”
“What are you going to do, dear?”
“I know what I should like to do,” he said hoarsely; “go and half kill that scoundrel at the Hall.”
“Oh, Hartley!”
“This explains why North has not been. He knows too much. Heaven! how is it that a woman can be lost to all that is due to herself, leave alone to those she is supposed to love!”
There was an inexpressible bitterness in his tone as he spoke.
“But what are you going to do?”
“Do!” he said fiercely, but with a tinge of despair in his words; “I’m going to thank Heaven that the man whom I believe to be the soul of honour and manliness has been saved from linking his fate with that of such a woman as Leo Salis.”
“Oh, Hartley!” cried Mary, “she is our sister.”