"
Hazen, who could hardly tear his eyes from her face, fell slowly back as
she painfully and conscientiously returned to her task. "Good God!" he
murmured, as his eye sought Ransom's. "What a likeness!" Then he looked
again at the girl, at the wave of her raven black hair breaking into
little curls just above her ear; at the smooth forehead rendered so
distinguished by the fine penciling of her arching brows; at the delicate
nose with nostrils all alive to the beating of an over-anxious heart; at
the mouth, touching in its melancholy so far beyond her years; and lastly
at the strong young figure huddled on the little stool; and bending
forward again, he uttered two or three quick sentences which Ransom could
not catch.
His persistence, or the near approach of his face to hers, angered her.
Rising quickly to her feet, she vehemently cried out:
"Go away from here. It is not right to keep on talking to a deaf girl
after she has told you she cannot hear you." Then catching sight of
Ransom, who had advanced a step in his sympathy for her, she gave a
little sigh of relief and added querulously:
"Make this man go away. This is the landlady's room. I don't like to have
strangers talk to me. Besides--" here her voice fell, but not so low as
to be inaudible to the subject of her remark, "he's not pretty. I've seen
enough of men and women who are--"
At this point Ransom drew Hazen out into the hall.
"What do you think now?" he demanded.
Hazen did not reply. The room they had just left seemed to possess a
strange fascination for him. He continued to look back at it as he
preceded Ransom down the hall. Ransom did not press his questions, but
when they were on the point of separating at the head of the stairs, he
held Hazen back with the words:
"Let us come to some understanding. Neither of us can desire to waste
strength in wrong conclusions. Can that woman be other than your own
sister?"
"No." The denial was absolute. "She is my sister."
"Anitra?" emphasized Ransom.
The smile which he received in reply was strangely mirthless.
"I never rush to conclusions," was Hazen's remark after a moment of
possibly mutual heart-beat and unsettling suspense. "Ask me that same
question to-morrow. Perhaps by then I shall be able to answer you."
CHAPTER XX
BETWEEN THE ELDERBERRY BUSHES
"No."
The word came from Ransom. He had reached the end of his patience and was
determined to have it out with this man
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