For you have Papa's sense of honour--and oh! if you should learn to despise me, my dear brother!' She kissed him; her nerves were agitated by strong mental excitement.
He attributed it to her recent attack of illness, but could not help asking, while he caressed her: 'What's that?
Despise you ?' It may have been that Caroline felt then, that to speak of something was to forfeit something.

A light glimmered across the dewy blue of her beautiful eyes.

Desire to breathe it to him, and have his loving aid: the fear of forfeiting it, evil as it was to her, and at the bottom of all, that doubt we choose to encourage of the harm in a pleasant sin unaccomplished; these might be read in the rich dim gleam that swept like sunlight over sea-water between breaks of clouds.
'Dear Van! do you love her so much ?' Caroline knew too well that she was shutting her own theme with iron clasps when she once touched on Evan's.
Love her?
Love Rose?
It became an endless carol with Evan.

Caroline sighed for him from her heart.
'You know--you understand me; don't you ?' he said, after a breathless excursion of his fancy.
'I believe you love her, dear.

I think I have never loved any one but my one brother.' His love for Rose he could pour out to Caroline; when it came to Rose's love for him his blood thickened, and his tongue felt guilty.