“Yes,” said Arthur, slowly, “that will do. Shall I thank you, Alys, or would you rather not?”
She looked up with a sparkle of her old mischievousness in her eyes.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said; “I don’t quite see it, I confess. I have simply stated a fact.” Then suddenly she held up her hands before her face, which was growing hot again. “No, no, Arthur, don’t thank me,” she exclaimed; “I could not bear it. It is altogether too—too bad that anything like this should come between you and me. Go away, please, and send Laurence.”
Arthur looked at her with earnest, regretful tenderness. But he saw that she was right. She would be better without him, and he went. Five minutes afterwards her brother entered the room.
“Alys,” he said, sternly, but any one that knew him could have seen that it was a sternness born of anxiety, “what is all this? What have you been doing? I cannot understand what Arthur says, or rather he won’t explain, but refers me to you. What have you been doing?”
“Only enacting the part of Miss Jane Baxter,” said Alys, with an attempt at indifference.
“Alys, what do you mean?”
“Who refused all the men before they axed her,” continued Alys, in the same tone.
“Alys!” said her brother again, and something in his tone arrested her.
She looked up.