“You cannot frighten me, Rupert,” said Annie, much to the astonishment of that gentleman, “for I have thought the whole thing carefully over. It would be quite impossible for me to be punished and for you to go scot-free; so, for your own safety, you will keep what you know in the dark. Now, the thing for you to consider is that I do not intend to help you to get any money from my friends, the Achesons.”
Rupert was so much astonished at Annie’s tone that for a moment he did not reply. Then, all of a sudden, he changed his tactics. He ceased to be furious, and became, in the poor girl’s opinion, far more dangerous. He drew her hand through his arm and invited her to walk with him. He then proceeded to sketch a most vivid and graphic picture of his own sufferings, the extreme danger in which he stood, and the awful disgrace which would fall upon Annie’s devoted head when the law of the land took its course upon him.
But Annie, for some reason which she did not quite understand herself, felt strangely strong that afternoon. Perhaps it was Mrs. Acheson’s kindness; perhaps it was the thought of Leslie, and what Leslie endured through Annie’s former ill-doing. Even Belle, with all her eccentricities, had a perceptible influence upon Annie now.
“For all these good, these dear people look upon crime as an impossibility,” thought the girl. “Now, Rupert seems to take it as the ordinary course of existence. There is no saying; I may get to look at things from his standpoint if I don’t take care. I dare not; I will never yield to his entreaties.”
So, though he begged of her, and implored of her, and bullied her, and flattered her, though he used all his eloquence, Annie remained firm.
It was the first time in all Rupert’s experience that he found her so, and it was the first time he thoroughly respected his sister. At the end of that interview he saw that if he was to get anything out of the Achesons he must do it in his own way.
“You have astonished and pained me,” he said at last. “I never thought you would desert me. Even in my darkest hour I have always thought ‘Well, at least there is Annie.’ Now my hour of gloom has truly arrived, my black hour come, and I am only able to say ‘Annie has deserted me.’”