y
resembled Miriam's that there was no doubt of his being her brother.
Yet he had more beauty as a man than she as a woman. Her traits were in
him developed so as to lose severity and attain a kind of vigour, which
at first sight promised a rich and generous nature; his excellent
forehead and dark imaginative eyes indicated a mind anything but likely
to bear the trammels in which Miriam had grown up. In the attitude with
which he waited for his sister to speak there was both pride and shame;
his look fell before hers, but the constrained smile on his lips was
one of self-esteem at issue with adversity. He wore the dress of a
gentleman, but it was disorderly. His light overcoat hung unbuttoned,
and in his hand he crushed together a bat of soft felt.

"Why have you come to see me, Reuben?" Miriam asked at length, speaking
with difficulty and in an offended Lone.

"Why shouldn't I, Miriam?" he returned quietly, stepping nearer to her.
"Till a few days ago I knew nothing of the illness you have had, or I
should, at all events, have written. When I heard you had come to
Naples, I--well, I followed. I might as well be here as anywhere else,
and I felt a wish to see you."

"Why should you wish to see me? What does it matter to you whether I am
well or ill?"

"Yes, it matters, though of course you find it hard to believe."

"Very, when I remember the words with which you last parted from me. If
I was hateful to you then, how am I less so now?"

"A man in anger, and especially one of my nature, often says more than
he means. It was never _you_ that were hateful to me, though your
beliefs and your circumstances might madden me into saying such a
thing."

"My beliefs, as I told you then, are a part of myself--_are_ myself."

She said it with irritable insistence--an accent which would doubtless
have been significant in the ears of Eleanor Spence.

"I don't wish to speak of that. Have you recovered your health, Miriam?"

"I am better."

He came nearer again, throwing his hat aside.

"Will you let me sit down? I've had a long journey in third-class, and
I feel tired. Such weather as this doesn't help to make me cheerful. I
imagined Naples with a rather different sky."

Miriam motioned towards a chair, and looked drearily from the window at
the dreary sea. Neither spoke again for two or three minutes. Reuben
Elgar surveyed the room, but inattentively.

"What is it you want of me?" Miriam asked, facing him abruptly.