"I should be obliged to you," he said, still holding his cigar between his fingers, and looking down at her with a very dark frown upon his face, "if you would kindly tell me exactly what you mean." CHAPTER IV. Florence Lepel raised her beautiful eyes at last to her brother's face. "I only repeat what you yourself have said. There is no way out of it--for you." Her voice was quite even and expressionless, but Hubert's face contracted at the sound of her words as if they hurt him. He raised his cigar mechanically to his lips, found that it had gone out, and, instead of relighting it, threw it away angrily from him amongst the flowers. His sister, her eyes keen notwithstanding the velvety softness of their glance, saw that his hands trembled as he did so. "I should like to have some conversation with you," he said, in a tone that betokened irritation, "if you can spare a little time from your duties." "They are not particularly engrossing just now," said Miss Lepel evenly, indicating the book that lay upon her lap. "I am improving my mind by the study of the French language," she said. "The General knows nothing of French authors since the days of Racine, and will think me quite laudably employed in reading a modern French novel." "The General is not likely to find you anywhere to-day, nor for many a day to come." "Is he dead?" asked his sister, ruffling the pages of her book. She did not look as if anybody's death could disturb her perfect equanimity. "Are you a fiend, Florence," Hubert burst out angrily, "that you can speak in that manner of a man who has been so great a benefactor, so kind a friend, to both of us? Have you no heart at all?" "I am not sure. If ever I had one, I think that it was killed--three months ago." Her voice sank to a whisper as she uttered the last few words. Her breath came a little faster for a second or two--then she was calm again. Her brother looked at her with an air of stupefaction. "How dare you allude to that shameful episode in your life," he said sternly, "and to me, of all people!" "If not to you, I should certainly speak of it to no one," she answered quietly. There was a sudden blaze of light in the red-brown eyes beneath the heavily-veined eyelids. "You are my only safety-valve; I must speak sometimes--or die. Besides"--in a still lower tone--"I see nothing shameful about it. We have done no harm. If he loved me better than he loved his chattering commonplace little wife, I was not to blame. How could I help it if I loved him too? It was _kismet_--it had to be. You should not have interfered." "And pray what would have happened if I had not interfered? What shame, what ruin, what disgrace!"