For how many hours she had been trying to picture this meeting in her mind, now imagining him tender and affectionate as she wished him to be, now cold or contemptuous or resentful; and in every case her heated brain had suggested the very words he would use to her; but for this careless tone, and the inexplicable look on his face, according so ill with his tone, she was quite unprepared, and for some time she could make no reply to his words.
“Arthur,” she spoke at last, “if you could have known how anxiously I have been waiting for you since yesterday, I think you would in mercy have come a little sooner.”
“Well, no, Fan, I think not,” he returned, still careless.
She advanced two or three steps nearer.
“Have you then come at last only to confirm my worst fears? Tell me, Arthur—my brother! Are you sorry to have me for a sister?”
Again he laughed.
“What a simple maiden you must be to ask such a question!” he said. “Sorry? Good God, I should think so! Sorry is no word for it. If Fate thought it necessary to thrust a sister on me I wish it had rather been some yellow-skinned, sour old spinster, but not you.”
“Do you hate me then?” she exclaimed, misinterpreting his meaning in her agitation. “Oh what have I done to deserve such unhappiness? Have I brought it on myself by those cruel words I spoke to you when we last met?”
He had turned again towards her and was watching her face, but when she looked at him his eyes dropped.
“Yes, I remember your words, Fan,” he said. “You abused me at Kew Gardens, and you think I am having my revenge. You would remember me, you said, only to detest me. Am I less a monster now because I am your relation?”