“You wish me to be still more explicit?”
She invited him to be so.
“Well, as far as I can I will be.” His air was simple matter of fact. “But I warn you that we are now at the point where we have to realize that Fate is so much stronger than ourselves.”
A momentary hesitation drew a harsh, “Go on, let me hear the worst.”
“Can’t you guess who this girl is?” he said abruptly.
“Pray, why should one?”
“She is the girl Jack wants to marry.”
A long silence followed this announcement. It would have been kind perhaps had he helped his sister to break it, but a clear perception of the first thought in her mind had raised a barrier. With a patience that was half-malicious he waited for a speech that he knew was bound to come.
“It was to have been expected,” she said at last with something perilously like a snarl of subdued anger.
“Why expected?” They were the words for which he had waited, and he seized them promptly.