right to know."

"Wait," she gasped again. "Oh, Eugene, wait. I--can't--"

Suddenly Madelon hung heavy on her brother's arm. "Madelon," he cried
out loudly to her, as if she were deaf--"Madelon, don't! You needn't
tell me. Madelon!"

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