" said Cornelius, coming between them, "there's no knowing
you girls! Would you believe it, Mr. Vavasor--that young woman was
crying her eyes out last night over the meanest humbug of a Chadband I
ever set mine on! There ain't one of those fishes comes within sight of
him for ugliness. And she would have it he was to be pitied--sorrowed
over--loved, I suppose!"
The last words of his speech he whined out in a lackadaisical tone.
Hester flushed, but said nothing. She was not going to defend herself
before a stranger. She would rather remain misrepresented--even be
misunderstood. But Vavasor had no such opinion of the brother as to take
any notion of the sister from his mirror. When she turned from Cornelius
next, in which movement lay all the expression she chose to give to her
indignation, he passed behind him to the other side of Hester, and there
stood apparently absorbed in the contemplation of a huge crustacean. Had
Cornelius been sensitive, he must have felt he was omitted.
"Why, can it be?" she said--to herself, but audibly--after a moment of
silence, during which she also had been apparently absorbed in the
contemplation of some inhabitant of the watery cage.
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