"To—no!" And a tremulous smile played about her lips. "Poor Arthur! He must be dead. He ran away after the bank failure and I have never heard from him since. He and Henry were very unlike, and I always felt more closely attached to Arthur. He was not brilliant, like Henry; he was gentle and quiet in his ways, and father was often impatient with him. Henry has been very bitter toward Arthur and has appealed to me on the score of Arthur's ill-doing. It took all his own fortune, he says, to save Arthur and the family name from dishonor."
She was remarkably composed throughout this recital, and I marveled at her more and more. Now, after a moment's silence, she turned to me with a smile.
"We have been annoyed in another way. It is so ridiculous that I hesitate to tell you of it—"
"Pray do not—you need tell me nothing more, Miss Holbrook."
"It is best for you to know. My niece has been annoyed the past year by the attentions of a young man whom she greatly dislikes and whose persistence distresses her very much indeed."
"Well, he can hardly find her here; and if he should—"
Miss Holbrook folded her arms upon her knees and smiled, bending toward me. The loveliness of her hair, which she wore parted and brushed back at the temples, struck me for the first time. The brown—I was sure it had been brown!—had yielded to white—there was no gray about it; it was the soft white of summer clouds.
"Oh!" she exclaimed; "he isn't a violent person, Mr. Donovan. He's silly, absurd, idiotic! You need fear no violence from him."
"And of course your niece is not interested—he's not a fellow to appeal to her imagination."
"That is quite true; and then in our present unhappy circumstances, with her father hanging over her like a menace, marriage is far from her thoughts. She feels that even if she were attached to a man and wished to marry, she could not. I wish she did not feel so; I should be glad to see her married and settled in her own home. These difficulties can not last always; but while they continue we are practically exiles. Helen has taken it all splendidly, and her loyalty to me is beyond anything I could ask. It's a very dreadful thing, as you can understand, for brother and sister and father and child to be arrayed against one another."