"Poor Carsluith! It will be a heavy disappointment to father. He is failing more rapidly than I care to notice, and had begun to lean on you. I don't think I can forgive her. Yes; go out, and forget her."
"It was not Miss Chatterton's fault," Maxwell declared quickly. "She never, to use the inappropriate phrase, encouraged me. It was my own folly to hope that she could stoop to me."
"Without any wish to flatter you, I consider that Miss Chatterton might have stooped a good deal farther," said Margaret Maxwell. "However, we need not go into that; and I am only sorry you are so hardly hit. I wonder if it was because of Dane?"
"No," Maxwell answered with decision. "I can't exactly tell you why, but I am certain it was not because of Dane."
His sister said nothing further, though she was not convinced. Her heart was heavy for her brother, because she knew the Maxwell temperament, and that he was not the man to change.
Carsluith passed out into the darkness, and leaning against a fir, spoke half aloud:
"No man Miss Chatterton had smiled upon could scatter his affections as Dane seems to have done. Pshaw! The thing is perfectly impossible!"
This was, perhaps, a greater tribute to the speaker's loyalty than to his knowledge of human nature, though Carsluith Maxwell was usually accounted a shrewd man.