"Marius!" he said, and his voice had changed again to softness.
The younger man turned sharply round.
"Forgive me, my lord," he said wildly. "Forgive me!"
"What have I to forgive?" answered the Earl sadly. "I am sorry for it, Marius. God knows that I am sorry for it—for you, I mean."
"But it could never have been," continued my lord. "She—it is not there, Marius."
He crossed wearily to the desk and seated himself before the blank sheet of paper and the new quill.
"I perceive it," whispered Marius.
The Earl moved the candle on the desk further away from him, as if the light troubled his eyes.
"You must not altogether blame me, Marius; I think in no case would your idyll have survived."
His back was towards his brother, who did not look in his direction but straightly out at the darkness beyond the window; they had never been intimate, nor had either often been in the other's thoughts, but now the kinship told, there was a sense of perfect understanding between them that required no words to make plain.