"Don't be foolish, Fledra!" he said quite harshly. "A man can't love and unlove at will. I feel as if I should never know another happy moment!"
* * * * *
For several days Ann watched her brother in dismay. He had grown taciturn and gloomy. The boyish energy had left him. She ventured to speak to Everett about it.
"He doesn't seem like the same boy at all," she said sadly, after explaining. "I can't imagine what has caused the change in him."
Everett remembered Shellington's face as it had bent over Fledra, and smiled slightly.
"Have you ever thought lately that he might be in love?"
"In love!" gasped Ann. "No, I know that he isn't; for it was only at the time of the Dryden Fair that he told me he cared for no one."
"He might have changed since then," Everett said quizzically.
"But he hasn't met anyone lately," argued Ann. "I know it isn't Katherine; for--for he told me so."
"I know someone he met at the fair."
Ann, startled, glanced up.
"Who? Do tell me, Everett! Don't stand there and smile so provokingly. If you could only understand how I have worried over him!"
Brimbecomb put on a grave face.
"Haven't you a very pretty girl in the house who is constantly under his eye?"
Still Ann did not betray understanding.
"Don't you think," asked Everett slowly, "that he might have fallen in love with--this little Fledra?"
An angry sparkle gleamed in Ann's eyes.
"Don't be stupid, Everett. Why, she's only a child. It would be awful! Horace has some sense of the fitness of things."
Everett thought of the evening he himself had succumbed to a desire to kiss Flea.
"No man has that," he smiled, "when he is attracted toward a pretty woman."
"But she isn't even grown up."
How little one woman understands another! In his eyes Fledra had matured; for his masculinity had sought and found the natural opposite forces of her sex. These thoughts he modified and voiced.
"Not quite from your standpoint, Ann; but possibly from Horace's."
Pale and distressed, Ann got to her feet.
"Then--then, of course, she must go," she said with decision. "I can't have him unhappy, and--Why, such a thing could--never be!"
She could scarcely wait for Everett to depart; but suppressed her anxiety and delicately turned the subject out of deference to Horace. She listened inattentively as Brimbecomb explained some new cases that he was soon to bring to court, and kissed him when he bade her goodnight. Then, with beating heart, she sought her brother.