It is true that there are subjects which a man may fairly decline to discuss even with the tenderest and most devoted of sisters; rebuffs which smart, hurting alike to the pride and the temper. Still she had been trusted before now even with such things as these, and might have been again. She did not choose, however, to force his confidence. If he had anything to tell her she was always there, he knew that. If not, well, she must learn to do without his confidence. She tried hard to feel some regret for what seemed to her his evident disappointment; but this was more than even her sisterly heroism was equal to. If she refrained from rejoicing, it was as much as she could honestly achieve.
At last there came an evening when the Colonel apparently had no engagements, or if he had, he did not seem disposed to keep them. He came into the sitting-room where his sister was sitting with a book in her hands, and strolled up and down for a while with his hands in his pockets, whistling faintly, and moving his elbows up and down in accompaniment to his tune. It almost seemed to her that he was a little nervous, as if he were trying to wind his courage up to the point of saying something – something which did not come at all easily.
At last he came to a halt before her.
"Well, Fan!"
She looked up, wondering rather what he was going to say, and let her book fall upon her lap.
"I've – er – something to tell you. I don't know quite how you'll feel about it. I'm not even very sure how I feel about it myself. Still you've got to know it."
She still remained silent, puzzled, wondering. Her impression, ever since the day at San Francesco, had been that her brother had not anything to tell her; that whatever expectations he had cherished, whatever hopes may have been held out to him, had come to a collapse there; that, excepting in the way of sisterly condolence, which, apparently, was not acceptable, there was nothing for her to hear or to say. Now, however, it appeared there was. She waited for him to speak.
"I'm engaged to be married, Fan."
Poor Lady Frances! Her heart gave a cruel bound! A week ago she was prepared to hear this, and would have received it, if not without emotion, at least with composure. Now it came upon her with all the cruelty, with all the bitterness, of a surprise. Surely, surely everything had tended latterly to show that he was not going to be married – rather the contrary; that all that had come to an end a week ago. Since he was, however, there could be no question at all in her mind as to the person, and she tried, therefore, to summon the desired cordiality to her lips.
"Well, dear, you will have a beautiful wife, at any rate," she said, with a violent, almost an heroic effort.
The Colonel got red up to the very roots of his hair, and down to the very roots of his beard. "A beautiful wife!" he gasped in the tone of a man who has been gratuitously insulted. "What the – what on earth do you mean by that, Frances?"
His sister opened her eyes in astonishment. "Surely yes; beautiful!" she answered. "There are limits to the possibilities even of feminine detraction," she went on, smiling rather wanly, "and I don't see how any one, even a desperately jealous sister, could deny that Mrs Markham is a beautiful
