"Oh don't touch me! Don't come near me! No wonder your Dariel ran away. You have not the least sense of noble things. What have I done, to have such a brother?"
"There must be a crack in the family," I said, as she cut away into a Windsor chair, and fixed all her soul on the fire, as if it were the only warm thing left on earth.
"Wonderful, wonderful," I pursued my own reflections, till she should come round.
"And you don't even seem to care to ask what it is he has done to me!" Grace began to show her pretty nose over her left shoulder, while I snuffed the candles, and began to fill a pipe. "Though you know the high opinion I always have of your opinion."
"You had better not say a word about it," I answered in the kindest manner; "no doubt it is the usual thing. You told me that all men were alike, till you made such an idol of poor Stocks and Stones. Now you see that he is just like the rest of us."
"I have long ceased to hope for any greatness from you; but I did expect some fairness," my sister spoke as if I had not allowed her to say a word all this time: "you know that I cannot argue, George; or at least you pretend to think so, which comes to the very same thing with a man. Then how thoroughly ashamed of yourself you ought to be, as soon as you can spare me time to tell you the simple truth. Mr. Jackson Stoneman, the gentleman you with such admirable taste and such lofty humour call 'Stocks and Stones,' is not tired of me, as you kindly imagine. In fact he thinks more of me than ever. If you had only seen his face——"
"Don't cry, my dear child. Now don't cry any more. I am very sorry if I misunderstood you. But how could I help it? You do take such a time. What can be his reason for behaving in this manner?"
"Because he is ru—ru—ruined!" She never was much of a hand at crying; but this terrible word, and her effort at it, served as the cord that brings down the shower-bath. "Hoo—hoo—hoo!" she went, and it was no good for me to say anything. "Oh that Dariel were crying for me like that!" was the thought that came into my selfish heart. "I should not mind being ru—ru—ruined, if I could only hope for that!" Then Grace got better, as girls always do, if you let them have their cry out.
"What makes it so—so distressing, so heart-breaking, is that the whole of it has been through me—through me, whom he chose without a single penny—me, who had nothing more than poverty to bring him, poverty, and faith, and a very ordinary mind! And then, not content with that, I must do my best to rob him of every farthing of his noble fortune. Perhaps one of the wealthiest men in the world, until he set eyes upon unlucky me. Oh George, it will never be in your power to understand my pure contempt for money! Yet you ought not to rob anybody of it; and I have robbed the noblest man that ever lived of every penny, every penny!"
"In the name of the forty thieves, and Morgiana, and the man they cut into four pieces, how can you have done all this?" I asked, being certain that there never was a girl more reasonable, yet remembering how the wisest of them love a little speculation.