Miriam made an involuntary movement as if to withdraw her hand, but overcame herself before she had succeeded.

“How did she come to know me so quickly?” was her question, murmured absently.

“From Mrs. Spence, it seemed.  Come, tell me what you have been doing this long time.  You have seen Greece too.  I must go to Greece—­ perhaps before the end of this year.  I’ll make a knapsack ramble:  Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, Constantinople.”

Miriam kept silence, and her brother appeared to forget that he had said anything that required an answer.  Presently he released her hand, after patting it, and moved restlessly in his chair; then he looked at his watch, and compared it curiously with the clock on the mantelpiece.

“Ciss,” he began suddenly, and at once with a laugh corrected himself—­“Miriam, I mean.”

“What?”

“I forget what I was going to say,” he muttered, after delaying.  “But that reminds me; I’ve been anxious lest you should misunderstand what I said yesterday.  You didn’t think I wished to make charges against Cecily?”

“It’s difficult to understand you,” was all she replied.

“But you mustn’t think that I misjudge her.  Cecily has more than realized all I imagined her to be.  There are few women living who could be called her equals.  I say this in the gravest conviction; this is the simple result of my knowledge of her.  She has an exquisite nature, an admirable mind.  I have never heard her speak a sentence that was unworthy of her, not one!”

His voice trembled with earnestness.  Miriam looked at from under her eyebrows.

“If any one,” he pursued, “ever threw doubt on the perfect uprightness of Cecily’s conduct, her absolute honour, I would gage my life upon the issue.”

And in this moment he spoke with sincerity, whatever the mental process which had brought him to such an utterance.  Even Miriam could not doubt him.  His clenched fist quivered as it lay on his knee, and the gleam of firelight showed that his eves were moist.

“Why do you say this?” his sister asked, still scrutinizing him.

“To satisfy myself; to make you understand once for all what I do believe.  Have you any other opinion of her, Miriam?”

She gave a simple negative.

“I am not saying this,” he pursued, “in the thought that you will perhaps repeat it to her some day.  It is for my own satisfaction.  If I could put it more strongly, I would; but I will have nothing to do with exaggerations.  The truth is best expressed in the simplest words.”

“What do you mean by honour?” Miriam inquired, when there had been a short silence.

“Honour?”

“Your definitions are not generally those accepted by most people.”

“I hope not.”  He smiled.  “But you know sufficiently what I mean.  Deception, for instance, is incompatible with what I understand as honour.”