"Anna, you are right, and something is troubling me—something that can never be set straight in this world; but not even to you can I speak of it." Then she knew, and in her innocent love she would fain have comforted him.
"I am very sorry—very, very sorry," was all she could find to say.
"I am sorry too," he returned gently, and then he kissed her cheek, and Anna stole away sadly to her own room. If she shed tears they were for him, and not for herself. Anna's affection for her adopted brother was perfectly unconscious and selfless; she never indulged in unwholesome introspection; she never asked herself why her heart ached that night, and a sense of loneliness and desolation stole over her.
Malcolm was unhappy, that was her one thought—things had gone wrong with him. Oh, if she could only give him his heart's desire! This wonderful unknown Elizabeth—had she refused him? Was there some one else? Alas, these questions were not to be answered. She must play her part of a faithful little sister, who must ask nothing, refuse nothing.
Malcolm's ordeal was not yet over. When he threw away his cigarette and went back to the drawing-room, he found his mother alone.
"I thought Anna was with you," he said apologetically, "or I would not have stayed out there so long. I am afraid I must be going now."
"You have your latch-key," she returned quietly; "sit down a moment, I want to speak to you, Malcolm. You are not yourself this evening, something has gone wrong." Again Anna's very words. He was silent. Why had his womankind such sharp eyes?
"I am a bit flattened out," he acknowledged, "but I shall be all right in a day or two;" but she passed this by almost contemptuously.
"Something is troubling you," she continued, "and to judge by your looks it is no light thing. You have grown thinner, Malcolm."
"Oh, I was always one of the lean kine," he returned lightly; but she seemed almost affronted at the little joke.