"It is true—she confessed it with her own lips."
"Confessed it, sister!" said the young man; and then added, with a spirit that surprised her, "If that be so, why then good luck to her: she shall have her freedom. I don't think I shall break my heart; and, certainly, I shan't force her to marry me. But, Hal,—look you, sister Hal,—I did not think she would cozen me. She confessed it, did she? Why, that's enough. I'm an honourable man; but after being cheated and jilted, I don't care much——But if I don't kill the scoundrel, Hal!—I say if I don't kill him, you may have leave to call me a fool and chicken twice over!—Confess it!"
If this display of spirit surprised Miss Falconer, the manifest distress with which her brother spoke, incredible as it may seem, greatly gratified her. His greatest fault in her eyes,—that is, aside from his dissipated habits,—was that easy indifference of disposition, or indolence of feeling, which kept him reckless and passive when she would have had him ardent and energetic. She knew him to be insensible of the full value of that prize it was her ambition to secure him; and had he been any but her brother, she would have hated him for what seemed the feebleness of his affection, as indicated by the little pains he took to secure that of Catherine. It was obvious, from this homely burst, in which magnanimity, pride, indignation, anger, and distress, were all so characteristically jumbled together, that the young gentleman had really feeling enough at bottom, and that, in a great measure, of the right kind; and the discovery brought a ray of hope into her mind.
"Brother," said she, "if you really love Catherine, you may yet save her."
"What! after confessing she loves another?" cried he, sulkily. "Now, Hal, for all your wisdom, you don't know me—I won't have her. Confess, indeed!"
"No—she did not confess—I will explain. Perhaps 'twas only a dream;—it was in her sleep."
"In her sleep!" cried Falconer, and then burst again into a roar of laughter. "In her sleep!" he ejaculated, giving way to a second peal. "Well! you have scared me with a vengeance!—But I forgive you—you have brought me to. Of all the cunning doctors in the world, give me yourself, Harry; you are infallible. And so she confessed in her sleep, poor soul, did she? Oh, Hal! Hal! Hal!" And here the capricious youth gave full swing to his merriment.
"Thus it is," said his sister, impatiently; "one extreme or the other, ever. Listen, brother; for I am serious. Your wild habits have greatly weakened Catherine's affections. Another comes, in the meanwhile, with attractions, I will not say superior to your own, but perhaps every way equal, who ceases not, neither by day nor by night, to influence her imagination and engage her heart. Judge of his success, when you know that she has admitted him to intimacy, nay, to confidence; judge, when I tell you that she trembles at the sound of his voice, turns pale at the echo of his footsteps, blushes when he speaks, looks glad when he is by her, and weeps when he is absent,—and, finally, who hides the secret from her own waking thoughts, yet babbles his name over in her dreams, and sheds tears, and smiles with her tears, when she murmurs it. Is not such a man,—the object of such emotions, himself so passionately enamoured, that his visage betrays the thought of his bosom, even when he knows he is suspected and watched,—is not such a man a dangerous rival?"
"Sister, you know better than myself," said Falconer, uneasily; "if you think so"——
"I do, brother; I believe, that, this moment, without knowing it herself, Catherine's mind is dwelling upon your rival; and if he be not driven away, you will lose her."