"Please go to bed properly in your own room, Honour. I want nobody but
Nanna."
"I will only lie down here, in case you call. I won't say a word," said Honour, unmoved by the glitter in her sister's eyes, from which the film of weariness had vanished. Marian raised herself on her elbow.
"I will send Nanna if I want you. Please go." As Honour still hesitated, her voice rose higher. "Go, go! I don't want you here. You never appreciated my dear Charley."
"Go, missy, go!" entreated the old woman. "Missus not know what she done say." But Honour was too deeply hurt.
"Oh, Marian, how can you say such a thing? Why, if I had not liked him for himself, I should have loved him because he was so fond of you, dear fellow!"
"You said to mamma that he was so very ordinary. I heard you through the chiks," persisted Marian, holding her with accusing eyes.
"I didn't mean you to hear. How could I tell you were there? And I learned to know him better afterwards—how good and kind he was." Honour defended herself desperately.
"It was not my hearing you, but your saying it, that mattered. I could laugh at it at the time, knowing what he really was, but now—I can't bear to have you in the room with me, to-night, at any rate, when you misjudged him so."
"Oh, Marian, how can you be so unkind? If I was in trouble, I would not keep you away."
"You would not be in this kind of trouble. You couldn't be. It isn't in you." Marian hurled her shafts deliberately. "You don't understand what it is to care for any one as I care for Charley, and I believe you never will. You can let two men go on making love to you at once for more than a year, because you can't make up your mind which of them you like best."