“But, Ralph, do you think—”
“Do I think her father will get her back? If he’s in time to catch her at the hospital, he assuredly will. If not, we shall have some little trouble on our side, I suspect. This seems to me to be how the matter stands now, Basil:—After that letter, and her running away, Sherwin will have nothing for it but to hold his tongue about her innocence; we may consider him as settled and done with. As for the other rascal, Mannion, he certainly writes as if he meant to do something dangerous. If he really does attempt to annoy us, we will mark him again (I’ll do it next time, by way of a little change!); he has no marriage certificate to shake over our heads, at any rate. What’s the matter now?—you’re looking pale again.”
I felt that my colour was changing, while he spoke. There was something ominous in the contrast which, at that moment, I could not fail to draw between Mannion’s enmity, as Ralph ignorantly estimated it, and as I really knew it. Already the first step towards the conspiracy with which I was threatened, had been taken by the departure of Sherwin’s daughter from her father’s house. Should I, at this earliest warning of coming events, show my brother the letter I had received from Mannion? No! such defence against the dangers threatened in it as Ralph would be sure to counsel, and to put in practice, might only include him in the lifelong persecution which menaced me . When he repeated his remark about my sudden paleness, I merely accounted for it by some commonplace excuse, and begged him to proceed.
“I suppose, Basil,” he said, “the truth is, that you can’t help being a little shocked—though you could expect nothing better from the girl—at