Mona raised herself. She loosed her hands from his grasp. Her woman's pride had been stung. It seemed to her that her brother was taking more than a brother's part.
"There is no mistake," she said, with some anger; "Dan has been here."
"You confess it?"
She looked him straight in the eyes and answered, "Yes, if you call it so—I confess it. It is of no use to deceive you."
Then there was an ominous silence. Ewan's features became death-like in their rigidity. A sickening sense came over him. He was struggling to ask a question that his tongue would not utter.
"Mona—do you mean—do you mean that Dan has—has—outrage—Great God! what am I to say? How am I to say it?"
Mona drew herself up.
"I mean that I can hide my feelings no longer," she said. "Do with me as you may; I am not a child, and no brother shall govern me. Dan has been here—outrage or none—call it what you will—yes, and—" she dropped her head over the cot, "I love him."
Ewan was not himself: his heart was poisoned, or then and there he would have unraveled the devilish tangle of circumstance. He tried again with another and yet another question. But every question he asked, and every answer Mona gave, made the tangle thicker. His strained jaw seemed to start from his skin.
"I passed him on the road," he said to himself, in a hushed whisper. "Oh, that I had but known!"