Eugene almost lifted his sister into the rocking-chair on the hearth, and hastened to get her a cup of water; but when he returned with it she motioned it away, and was sitting up, stern and straight and white, but quite conscious. "Hadn't you better drink it, Madelon?" pleaded Eugene. "No. What do I want it for? I am quite well," said she. "You almost fainted away." "I don't want it." Eugene set the cup on the dresser; then he came back to Madelon, and stood over her, looking at her, his dark face as pitiful as a woman's. "Madelon, why can't you tell me what new thing is making you act like this?" he said. Madelon made an impatient motion and started up, and would have gone out of the room, but Eugene flung an arm around her and held her firmly. "What is it, poor girl?" he whispered in her ear. Madelon had soft woman's blood in her veins, after all. Suddenly she shook convulsively, and would have kept her face firm, but she could not. She put her head on her brother's shoulder, and sobbed and wept as he had never seen her do, even when she was a child, for she had never been one to cry when she was hurt. Eugene sat down in the rocking-chair with his sister on his knee, and smoothed her dark hair as gently as her mother might have done. "Poor girl! poor girl!" he kept whispering; but, softly caressing as his voice was, his eyes, staring over his sister's head at the fire, got a fierce and fiercer look; for he was thinking of Burr Gordon and cursing him in his heart for all this. "Good Lord, Madelon, can't you put that fellow out of your head?" he cried out, sharply, all at once. Then Madelon hushed her sobs, with a stern grip of her will upon her quivering nerves, and raised herself up and away from him. "That has nothing to do with this," she said, coldly. "Let me go now, Eugene." But Eugene held her strongly with a hand on either arm, and scanned her keenly with his indignant eyes. "He is at the root of the whole matter," said he, "and you know it. I wish--" "I tell you Burr Gordon has nothing to do with this last. He knows nothing of it. Let me go, Eugene." But Eugene still held her and looked at her. "Madelon--" "What? I can sit here no longer. I have work to do. There is nothing the matter with me. I have nothing to complain of. What I do I do of my own free will." "Madelon," whispered Eugene, with a red flush stealing over his dark face, his eyes dropping a little before her, "you don't--think she will--marry him?" "Who? Dorothy?" Eugene nodded. "Of course she will--marry him, Eugene Hautville." Eugene set his sister down suddenly and got up. "All I've got to say is, then," he cried, with a movement of his right arm like a blow, "it's a damned shame that the child can't be taken care of among us all." "What do you mean, Eugene Hautville?" "I mean that she had better lie down in her grave than marry that--" "Take care what you say, Eugene." "I say she had--"