And therefore I was encouraged to send for you. It will
be better that we talk matters over a little. You have influence over
Reggie?"
"I think not." Once or twice she had tried to impose her own ideas of what
was right and fitting upon the young man, and had failed. Why should she
pretend to any influence?
"But of course you have. I want to ask you to be unselfish enough to exert
it for my brother's good."
"I would do that gladly if I could."
"Then, send him away. It will be doing him an inestimable benefit."
"I can tell him it would be better for him to go; but he is not easily
made to do a thing he does not like.
"He tells me--without any engagement on your part--he considers himself
bound to you."
She shook her head quickly, her face rose-red: "Oh no!"
"He is always being engaged to--somebody: poor Reggie!"
"Is he?" she asked innocently.
"Reginald is my brother," he went on, and he turned his gaze from her face
and looked at the finger-nails of his left hand with an absorbed
attention. "He is, however, so much younger than myself that he has almost
been like my son. You will give me credit, I am sure, for not wishing to
disparage Reginald, when I tell you that this is not by any means the
first time Reginald has thought of marriage.
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