"It is useless for you to rant and rave in that manner," said Florence Lepel, letting her eyes drop once more to the open pages of her French novel. "You did interfere, and there is an end of it. And what an end! You must be proud of your work. He dead, Marion dying, the General nearly mad with grief, the man Westwood hanged for a crime that he never committed!" "Westwood has been reprieved," said Hubert sharply. "What a relief to you!" commented his sister, with almost incredible coolness. He turned away from her, catching at his throat as if something rose to choke him there. His face was very pale; the lines of pain about his eyes and mouth were plainer and deeper than they had been before. Florence glanced up at him and smiled faintly. There was a strange malignity in her smile. "You can tell me," she said, when the silence had lasted for some minutes, "what you meant by saying that the General would not find me here to-day." "He has narrowly escaped a fit of apoplexy. He is to be kept quiet; he will not be able to see any one for some days to come." "Oh! What brought it on?" "The news," Hubert answered reluctantly, "of Westwood's reprieve." Miss Lepel smiled again. "Was he so very angry?" she said. "Ah, he would do anything in his power to bring his brother's murderer to justice--I have heard him say so a hundred times! You ought to be very grateful to me, Hubert, for remembering that you are my brother." "I wish to Heaven I were not!" cried the young man. "For some things I wish you were not too," said Florence slowly. She sat up, clasped her white hands round her knees, and looked at him reflectively. "If you had not been my brother, I suppose you would not have interfered," she went on. "You would have left me to pursue my wicked devices, and simply turned your back on me and Sydney Vane. I agree with you. I wish to Heaven--if you like that form of expression--that you were not my brother, Hubert Lepel! You have made the misery of my life." "And you the disgrace of mine!" he said bitterly. "Then we are quits," she answered, in the listless, passionless voice that she seemed especially to affect. "We need not reproach each other; we have each had something to bear at one another's hands." "Florence," said Hubert--and his voice trembled a little as he spoke--"what are you going to do? It is, as you say, useless for us to reproach each other for the past; but for the future let me at least be certain that my sacrifice will avail to keep you in a right path, that you will not again--not again----"