Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/301

 murmured pathetically. "But you won't make me quarrel. There must be two to quarrel, and I won't be one. We have always been good friends, more than good friends. I thought I was the only person on earth you did like"

"And, like everyone else, you consider that the liking you inspire confers a privilege to be impertinent," said his sister, with all that disdainful anger flashing from her languid eyes, which none of her family ever cared very much to meet.

She had risen from her chair, and was moving to and fro with a restless, controlled impatience. She remained very pale. Clairvaux kept his position on the hearth-rug, with a dogged good humour, and an uneasy confusion blended together which, at any other time, would have diverted her.

"Perhaps I may be impertinent," he said, humbly, "though, hang me, if I can see that that's a natural sort of word to be used between a brother and sister. I know you're a mighty great lady, and 'a law to yourself,' as some poet says; and never listen to anybody, and always go your own ways, and all that,—but still, if you