"Very well, I will go on," said she. "Edmond Brown, Ralph's older brother, died at the age of twenty; his mother also died of grief, and his father was inconsolable. Ralph would have been glad to mitigate his sorrow, but the coldness with which Monsieur Brown greeted his first attempts increased his natural timidity. He passed whole hours in melancholy silence beside that heartbroken old man, not daring to proffer a word or a caress, he was so afraid that his consolation would seem misplaced or trivial. His father accused him of lack of feeling, and Edmond's death left Ralph more wretched and more misunderstood than ever. I was his only consolation."
"I cannot pity him, whatever you may do," Raymon interrupted; "but there is one thing in his life and yours that I cannot understand: it is that you never married."
"I can give you a very good reason for that," she replied. "When I reached a marriageable age, Ralph, who was ten years older than I—an enormous difference in our climate, where the childhood of girls is so brief—Ralph, I say, was already married."
"Is Sir Ralph a widower? I never heard anyone mention his wife."
"Never mention her to him. She was young and rich and lovely, but she had been in love with Edmond—she had been betrothed to him; and when, in order to serve family interests and family sentiment, she was made to marry Ralph, she did not so much as try to conceal her aversion for him. He was obliged to go to England with her, and when he returned to Ile Bourbon after his wife's death, I was married to Monsieur Delmare and just about to start for Europe. Ralph tried to live alone, but solitude aggravated his misery. Although he has never mentioned Mistress Ralph Brown to me, I have every reason to believe that he was even more unhappy in his married life than he had been in his father's house, and that his natural melancholy was increased by recent and painful memories. He was attacked with the spleen again; whereupon he sold his coffee plantation and came to France to settle down. His manner of introducing himself to my husband was original, and would have made me laugh if my good Ralph's attachment had not touched me deeply. 'Monsieur,' he said, 'I love your wife; it was I who brought her up; I look upon her as my sister and even more as my daughter. She is my only remaining relative and the only person to whom I am attached. Allow me to establish myself near you and let us three pass our lives together. They say that you are a little jealous of your wife, but they say also that you are a man of honor and uprightness. When I tell you that I have never had any other than brotherly love for her, and that I shall never have, you can regard me with as little anxiety as if I were really your brother-in-law. Isn't it so, monsieur?' Monsieur Delmare, who is very proud of his reputation for soldierly frankness, greeted this outspoken declaration with a sort of ostentatious confidence. But several months of careful watching were necessary before that confidence became as genuine as he boasted that it was. Now it is as impregnable as Ralph's steadfast and pacific heart."
"Are you perfectly sure, Indiana," said Raymon, "that Sir Ralph is not deceiving himself the least bit in the world when he swears that he never loved you?"
"I was twelve years old when he left Ile Bourbon to go with his wife to England; I was sixteen when he returned to find me married, and he manifested more joy than sorrow. Now, Ralph is really an old man."
"At twenty-nine?"
"Don't laugh at what I say. His face is young, but his heart is worn out by suffering, and he no longer loves anybody, in order to avoid suffering."
"Not even you?"