"Oh, no. Keep your own counsel, by all means. But you are placing yourself in a very risky position. Lady Alice Brooke knows something that would, I suppose, compromise you in the world's eyes, if it were generally known. Her daughter is coming to Brooke's house. You mean--you seriously mean--to go to his house and visit this girl? thereby offending her mother (who is sure to hear of the visit) and bringing down the ill-will of all the Courtleroys upon your head? Have you no regard for your character and your position in the world? You are risking both, and you have nothing to gain." "Yes, I have." "What is it?" "I cannot tell you." "You mean you will not tell me?" "Perhaps so." Oliver Trent deliberately took a match-box from the mantelpiece, struck a match, and lighted a wax candle. "I should like to see your face," he said. Rosalind looked at him fully and steadily for a few seconds; then her eyelids fell, and for the second time that evening the color mounted in her pale cheeks. "I think that I know the truth," said her brother, composedly, after a careful study of her face. "You are mad, Rosalind, and you will live to rue that madness." "I don't know what you mean," she said, turning away from the light of the candle. "You speak in riddles." "I will speak in riddles, then, no longer. I will be very plain with you. Rosalind, you are in love with Caspar Brooke." She sank down on a low chair as if her limbs would support her no longer and rested her face upon her hands. "No," she said, in a low voice, "you are wrong: I do not love Caspar Brooke." "What other motive can you have?" She waited for a moment, and then said, still softly-- "I suppose I may as well tell you. I loved him once. In those first days of our acquaintance--when he was disappointed in his wife and seeking for sympathy elsewhere--I thought that he cared for me. I was mistaken. Oliver, can you keep my secret? No other soul in the world knows of this from me but you. I told him my love. I wrote to him--a wild, mad letter--offering to fly to the ends of the earth with him if he would go." Oliver stared at her as if he could not believe his ears. "And what answer did he make?" "He made none--because he never saw it. That letter fell into Lady Alice's hands. She did not know that it was the first that had been written: she took it to be one of a series. She wrote a short note to me about it; and the next thing I heard was that she had gone. But I know that he never saw that letter of mine." "All this," said Oliver, in a hard contemptuous voice, "does not explain your present line of conduct."