"But of course you have. I want to ask you to be unselfish enough to exert it for my brother's good."
"I would do that gladly if I could."
"Then, send him away. It will be doing him an inestimable benefit."
"I can tell him it would be better for him to go; but he is not easily made to do a thing he does not like.
"He tells me—without any engagement on your part—he considers himself bound to you."
She shook her head quickly, her face rose-red: "Oh no!"
"He is always being engaged to—somebody: poor Reggie!"
"Is he?" she asked innocently.
"Reginald is my brother," he went on, and he turned his gaze from her face and looked at the finger-nails of his left hand with an absorbed attention. "He is, however, so much younger than myself that he has almost been like my son. You will give me credit, I am sure, for not wishing to disparage Reginald, when I tell you that this is not by any means the first time Reginald has thought of marriage." He paused, and smiled awry to himself as he contemplated the finger-nails. "Or, rather, I should put it, not the first time he has talked to young ladies of being engaged to them."
Deleah sat silent, determined not to speak till speech was absolutely demanded of her.