“Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?”

“Sleek?  What do you mean by sleek?  You wouldn’t have a minister of the church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his mouth, would you?”

“Not for worlds, I assure you.  He is a most beautiful creature, and I admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I should have expected both you girls to rave about.  And as for you, I thought you were too good to rave about anybody!  You are unlike yourself this morning, and more like Doreen.”

Queenie laughed again that satirical little laugh which made a man wonder what her thoughts exactly were.

“You say that because you don’t know anything about me.  I don’t talk when Doreen is talking, because then nobody would listen to me.  I could talk, too, if anybody ever talked to me.”

“But one sees so little of you,” pleaded Dudley.  “You are generally out district-visiting, or busy for Mrs. Wedmore, so that one hasn’t a chance of knowing you well.  And one has got an idea that you are too good to waste your time in idle conversation with a mere man!”

“Good!” cried Queenie contemptuously.  “There’s nothing good about my district-visiting.  I like it, Doreen goes about telling people it is good of me.  But that’s only because she wouldn’t care about it herself.  I like fussing about and thinking I am making myself useful.  It’s like mamma’s knitting, which gets her the reputation of being very industrious, while all the time she enjoys it very much.”

“But you yourself said you were ‘devoted to good works,’ I quote your very words.”

“That was only in fun.  It’s what Doreen says of me.  You must have heard her.  She is much better than I am—­really much, more unselfish—­much more amiable.  Only because she’s always bright and full of fun, she doesn’t get the credit of any of her good qualities.  People think she’s only indulging her own inclination when she keeps us all amused and happy all day long.  But they don’t know that she can suffer just as much as anybody else, and that it costs her an effort to be lively for our sakes when she feels miserable.”

Queenie spoke with a little feeling in her usually hard, dry voice.  Dudley was silent for a long time when she had finished speaking.  At last they looked up at the same moment and met each other’s eyes.  And the reserved, harassed man felt his heart go out to the girl, with her quiet shrewdness and undemonstrative affection for her brilliant sister.

“Your quiet eyes see a great deal more than one would think, Queenie,” he said at last.  “I suppose they have seen that there is something—­something wrong—­with—­”

He spoke very slowly, and finally he stopped without finishing the sentence.

Queenie gravely took it up for him.

“Something wrong with you?  Of course I have.  Well?”

“I don’t know why I am telling you this.  I didn’t mean to tell any one.  But—­but—­well, I’ve begun; I may as well finish.  You’re not a person who would talk about anybody else’s secrets more than about your own.”