“Well, I hear you are an official personage—I ought to say, perhaps, a retired official personage. We might have received you more respectfully, if both my father’s daughters had been present at the station. It’s not my fault that my sister was not with me.”
The tone in which she said this strengthened my prejudice against her. It told me that the two girls were living together on no very friendly terms; and it suggested—justly or unjustly I could not then decide—that Miss Helena was to blame.
“My sister is away from home.”
“Surely, Miss Helena, that is a good reason for her not coming to meet me?”
“I beg your pardon—it is a bad reason. She has been sent away for the recovery of her health—and the loss of her health is entirely her own fault.”
What did this matter to me? I decided on dropping the subject. My memory reverted, however, to past occasions on which the loss of my health had been entirely my own fault. There was something in these personal recollections, which encouraged my perverse tendency to sympathize with a young lady to whom I had not yet been introduced. The young lady’s sister appeared to be discouraged by my silence. She said: “I hope you don’t think the worse of me for what I have just mentioned?”
“Certainly not.”
“Perhaps you will fail to see any need of my speaking of my sister at all? Will you kindly listen, if I try to explain myself?”
“With pleasure.”
She slyly set the best construction on my perfectly commonplace reply.