"
"Go 'way, Miss Phill! I'se got more sense dan tell Mass'r Richard any
sich thing."
Phyllis did not answer; she was thinking of a decision she might be
compelled to make, and the question was one which touched her very
nearly on very opposite sides. She loved her brother with all her
heart. Their lives had been spent together, for Phyllis had been left
to his guardianship when very young, and had learned to give him an
affection which had something in it of the clinging reliance of the
child, as well as of the proud regard of the sister. But John Millard
she loved, as women love but once. He was related by marriage to the
Fontaines, and had, when Phyllis and Richard were children, spent much
of his time at the Fontaine place.
But even as boys Richard and John had not agreed. To ask "why" is to
ask a question which in such cases is never fully answered. It is easy
to say that Richard was jealous of his sister, and jealous of John's
superiority in athletic games, and that John spoke sneeringly of
Richard's aristocratic airs, and finer gentleman ways; but there was
something deeper than these things, a natural antipathy, for which
there seemed to be no reason, and for which there was no cure but the
compelling power of a divine love.
John Millard had been for two years on the frontier, and there had
been very meager and irregular news from him.
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