"And you may carry my love back to her. I will not repay formality by formality."
"Love?" questioned he, with a keen glance.
"Yes—why not?"
"What reason have you to love her?"
"Certainly no cause for dislike," she replied. "She treated me kindly."
"'A dizzy man sees the world go round;'" quoted Richard.
"Mr. Copeland!" said Ida, with a grave sincerity, that always unmasked dissimulation. "For the short time we are together, let us speak as friends, who understand each other. Or do you prefer that I shall meet you upon your own ground of satirical innuendo?"
"As friends, Miss Ida! you have proved that the name is not meaningless. But we do not understand each other."
"We did!" said she.
"Partially. You have risen—I fallen in the scale of being, since then. Your conduct to my unhappy sister, has imposed a debt of gratitude upon us—upon me, especially, which words cannot liquidate. This is the one subject of mutual interest to Helen and myself. She is, in effect, a cloistered nun; an unsmiling ascetic;—atoning for the sins of youth by penances and alms. This phase of piety is the larvae stage, I imagine, Miss Ross?" A grieved look answered the sneer. "Pardon me! if your charity can make allowance for one, who has become a doubter from extraneous influences, rather than nature. Helen and myself have never exchanged a word, except upon common-place topics, during her widowhood, until three days ago. I had avowed my implacable hatred of her lover in her hearing. Other members of the family, have caught stray rumors here and there,—sent out, doubtless, by Miss Read; but their unbelief in them being settled by my silence, and Helen's apparent affliction, they have not noticed them except by a passing denial. But Helen knew that I watched her, and her surveillance of me was as jealously vigilant. I have seen her face blanch in an agony of alarm at my quitting her for an hour; and the most tender sister never wept and prayed for a brother's return, as she did for mine. I should not have been here now, but for intelligence, received a week since, of Ashlin's death."