Dollie stifled her sobs, and wiped her eyes.
In a few moments she was quiet and ready to listen.
“I’ll tell you all I know as quickly as possible,” Adele Ray said, brokenly; “and Oh, girls, I want your sympathy for my poor, dear brother!”
CHAPTER VII.
A BROTHER’S STORY.
Adele Ray was as pale as death when she spoke again, but her hands were clenched in a resolute manner.
She was a woman of twenty-five, whose life had been a sad one, and her handsome face was marred by lines of grief and bitterness.
In a low, vibrating voice she told her story, making it as brief as possible so as not to distress them.
“My dear brother has had a bitter experience,” she said, “for, like many a thoughtless youth he became enamored with a young girl while he was a boy at college, and without any of us knowing it he made her his wife. She was a vain, silly creature, who looked like a big wax doll, and in less than a year Archie discovered that she was faithless. He left her at once, but made her a generous allowance—he had money of his own, and no one asked him to account for it. One more year passed and he heard that the girl was dead—he took pains to prove it and considered the reports verified. Meanwhile not one of his family knew it. When he came home from college he was only twenty, and to think, my brother thought himself a widower.”
There were tears running down her face as she paused for a moment. Dollie had forgotten to weep, she was so interested in the story.