Mary looked troubled.
'I could not marry him, you know, Dick,' she faltered.
'Certainly not,' Dick said, 'if you don't care sufficiently for him; and yet he seems a man that a girl might care for.'
'Oh, he is,' Mary exclaimed. 'He was so manly and kind that I wanted to be nice to him.'
'You have evidently made up your mind, sister mine,' Dick said, 'to die a spinster.'
'Yes,' said Mary, with a white face.
Suddenly Dick took both her hands, and looked her in the face.
'Do you care for any other person, Mary?' he asked sharply.
Mary shook her head, but she did not return her brother's gaze. Her hands were trembling. She tried to pull them from him, but he held her firmly until she looked at him. Then she drew up her head proudly. Her hands ceased to shake. She had become marble again.
Dick was not deceived. He dropped her hands, and leant despondently against a tree.