her whole heart, her very existence – every thing she cares for – that is at stake? Let me be at peace. Don't ask me. Do what you choose – whatever you think right, whatever you think will be for your own happiness, your own comfort, – only, for pity's sake – for the sake of all the years we have spent together – don't ask me!"
The Colonel was so utterly taken aback at her vehemence, that he literally turned pale. An outburst of temper from his sister Frances was a thing unheard of – a thing absolutely portentous – phenomenal! Somehow or other, he had hardly realised all that his marriage meant for her. Had she been poor, it would probably have presented itself to him in clearer colours, but as it was, it really did not seem to him as if it made such very great odds. If she didn't care to go on living with him after he was married, as very possibly she mightn't, she could live anywhere she liked, and in whatever manner she preferred – stay in Venice, go elsewhere, do anything, in short, seeing that she had never even professed to be a dependent woman. Of course she was very fond of him, he knew that well enough. He was very fond of her, impossible to be more so; no man had ever had a better sister. Still a sister naturally was a sister, – and nobody in their senses ever expected arrangements of that kind to be absolutely binding and eternal.
"I suppose I couldn't very well get out of it now, eh, Fan? – could I? It would be rather well, awkward, wouldn't it?" he said, in a somewhat quavering voice.
"I don't know, Hal, – don't ask me; I tell you I have nothing to do with it. Get out of it? Of course you can't get out of it now; how could you?" she answered, all in a breath, and in a tone bordering closely upon ferocity. "Forgive me, dear, for being horribly cross," she added, a minute later, stooping and picking up the unfortunate account-book. "But there's no use in my pretending that I can reconcile myself to it – now or ever. I don't wish her any harm, but I grudge, grudge, grudge you to her. If I were your wife twenty thousand times over, I couldn't grudge you more. What have I besides you? Who else in the wide world to care for but you? A wife! talk to me of a wife! How many wives are there, I should like to know, who have had forty years' companionship of their husbands? Of course I don't expect for a single moment that you should feel as I do. It would be impossible, unnatural; perhaps it is unnatural even that I should feel so; but as I do, for God's sake don't try to make me pretend that I am satisfied, when I am not!"
She got away to her own room after this second outburst, and threw herself down into a chair, hiding her head against the back of it. It did seem to her too hard – too utterly cruel! If he had loved her – this other woman – it seemed to her that it would have been so much easier to bear. Love the mighty makes its own laws, and all the older, simpler, homelier ties necessarily go down before it as the weaker goes down before the stronger. But there was no question of anything of the sort here; no pretence or suggestion even of love, any more than there was of advantage, suitability – anything, in short, at all!
Her home was broken up, her life left desolate, the comely order of the days all put out, and all for what? For a nothing, through a mistake, in a moment of aberration. A single sting of disappointed van-
