“You don’t know,” he continued, with the tears in his eyes. “It was bad enough to be in the regiment with Payne and Bray, always ready to chaff me and begin imitating the old man, and that beast Rockley sneering at me; but when people began to talk as they did about you, Clairy—”
“Silence!” cried Claire, flashing up as she rose from her seat, and darted an indignant glance at the boy. “If you have come only to insult your sister—go.”
“Don’t talk like that, Clairy dear,” cried the boy. “Don’t be so hard upon a fellow. I suffered horribly, for they did talk about you shamefully, and I was very nearly calling Sir Harry out, only the Colonel wouldn’t let me fight. I’m sure I behaved well enough. Every one said I did.”
“Why have you come this morning?” said Claire coldly.
“Why have I come? Hark at her!” said Morton piteously. “Oh, dear, I wish I were a boy again, instead of an officer and a gentleman, and could go down and catch dabs with Dick Miggles off the pier.”
“Officer—gentleman? Morton, is it the act of a gentleman to side with the wretched people who made sport of your sister’s fame? To stand aloof when she is almost alone and unfriended, and this dreadful calamity has befallen us? Oh, Morton, are you my brother to act like this? Is it your manliness of which you made a point?”
“Claire—sis—dear sis,” he cried, throwing himself on his knees, and clasping her waist as he burst into a boyish fit of passionate weeping. “Don’t be so cruel to me. I have fought so hard. I have struggled against the pride, and shame, and misery of it all. You don’t know what a position mine has been, and I know now I ought to have taken your part and my father’s part against all the world. But I’ve been a coward—a miserable, pitiful, weak coward, and it’s a punishment to me. You, even you, hate me for it, and—and I wish I were dead.”
Claire’s face softened as she looked down upon the lad in his misery and abasement, and after a momentary struggle to free herself from him she stood with her hands stretched out over the head that was buried in the folds of her dress, and a tender yearning look took the place of the hard angry glance that she had directed at him.
“I have fought, God knows how hard,” he went on between his sobs, “but I’m only a boy after all, sis, and I hadn’t the strength and manliness to stand up against the fellows at the mess. I’ve shut myself up because I’ve been ashamed to be seen, and I’ve felt sometimes as if I could run right away and go somewhere, so that I could be where I should not be known.”
Claire’s hands trembled as they were very near his head now—as if they longed to clasp the lad’s neck and hold him to her breast.