“Pure nervousness. You must get over it, Miss Ross. No one expects you not to grieve for your brother, but this sort of thing can do the poor fellow no good, and it is very hard on those who are left.”
“I know they must feel it is my fault——”
“What?” shouted the doctor. “Your fault that your brother was murdered? Come, come, this is arrant nonsense. You don’t mean to say that you are making Keeling miserable on account of this delusion?”
“No, it is worse with him.” She spoke very low. “I have never told even Lady Haigh; but whenever I see Major Keeling, or even think of him, Colin’s face seems to rise up before me—not dead, but as the dervish described it, white and thin, and his hair white too. And I can’t help feeling that it may be a—warning.”
“A fiddlestick! Oh, you Scotch people, with your portents and your visions! A warning of what?”
“You don’t know—perhaps I ought not to tell you—but I am sure Colin would have disapproved of my—caring for Major Keeling. And we were twins, you know—what if he comes to show me that he disapproves of it still?” She looked at him with wide eyes of terror.
“Then you don’t know that in talking to Lady Haigh he gave her to understand that he had no objection to your marrying the Chief—excuse me if I speak plainly—and even looked forward to it? She told me as much when she was confiding to me her anxiety about you.”
“Colin said that to Elma, and she told you—and never told me!”
“Why, how could she? Of course she felt the time hadn’t come—that you would think her brutal, or horrid, or whatever young ladies call it. She mentioned it to me in confidence, and I had no business to repeat it; but I’m the sort of person that rushes in where angels fear to tread—am I not? Having once opened my attack, I couldn’t keep my biggest gun idle, could I? What! you won’t condescend to answer me?”
“I am trying to understand,” she said in a low voice. “It ought to make such a difference, and yet—there is Colin’s face.”