Black Sheep

Chapter II

Not long after eleven o’clock that evening, a gentle tap on the door of Abby’s bedchamber was followed immediately by the entrance of Miss Fanny Wendover, who first peeped cautiously into the room, and then, when she saw her aunt seated at the dressing-table, uttered a joyful squeak, and ran to fling herself into the arms held out to her, exclaiming: “You aren’t in bed and asleep! I told Grimston you wouldn’t be! Oh, how glad I am to see you again! how much I’ve missed you, dear, dear Abby!”

It would not have surprised Abby if she had been greeted with reserve, even with the wary, half-defiant manner of one expectant of censure and ready to defend herself; but there was no trace of consciousness in the welcome accorded her, and nothing but affection in the beautiful eyes which, as Fanny sank down at her feet, clasping her hands, were raised so innocently to hers.

“It’s horrid without you!” Fanny said, giving her hands a squeeze. “You can’t think!”

Abby bent to drop a kiss on her check, but said with mock sympathy: “My poor darling! So strict and unkind as Aunt Selina has been! I feared it would be so.”

“That’s what I’ve missed so much!” Fanny said, with a ripple of mirth. “I am most sincerely attached to Aunt Selina, but—but she is not a great jokesmith, is she? And not a bit corky!”

“I shouldn’t think so,” responded Abby cautiously. “Not that I know what corky means, but it sounds very unlike Selina—and, I may add, sadly unlike the language to be expected of a girl of genteel upbringing!”

That made Fanny’s eyes dance. “Yes—slang! It means—oh, bright, and lively! Like you!”

“Does it indeed? I collect you mean to pay me a handsome compliment, but if ever you dare to attach such an epithet to me again, Fanny, I shall—I shall—well, I don’t yet know what I shall do, but you may depend upon it that it will be something terrible! Corky! Good God!”

“I won’t,” Fanny promised. “Now, do, do be serious, beloved! I have so much to tell you. Something of—of the first importance.”

Abby knew a craven impulse to fob her off, but subdued it, saying in what she hoped was not a hollow voice: “No, have you? Then I will engage to be perfectly serious. What is it?”

Fanny directed a searching look at her. “Didn’t Aunt Selina—or Uncle James, perhaps—tell you about—about Mr Calverleigh?”

“About Mr—? Oh! Is he the London smart you’ve slain with one dart from your eyes? To be sure they did, and very diverting I thought them! That is to say,” she corrected herself, in a ludicrously severe tone, “that of course they are very right in thinking you to be far too young to be setting up a flirt! Most forward of you, my love—quite improper!”

She won no answering gleam. “It isn’t like that,” Fanny said. “From the very first moment that we met—” She paused, and drew a long breath. “We loved one another!” she blurted out.

Abby had not expected such an open avowal, and could think of nothing to say but that it sounded like a fairy-tale, which was not at all what she ought to have said, as she realized an instant later.

Raising glowing eyes to her face, Fanny said simply: “Yes, it is just like that! Oh, I knew you would understand, dearest! Even though you haven’t yet met him! And when you do meet him—oh, you will dote on him! I only wish you may not cut me out!”

Abby accorded this sally the tribute of a smile, but recommended her ecstatic niece not to be a pea-goose.

“Oh, I was only funning!” Fanny assured her. “The thing is that he isn’t a silly boy, like Jack Weaverham, or Charlie Ruscombe, or—or Peter Trevisian, but a man of the world, and much older than I am, which makes it so particularly gratifying—no, I don’t mean that!—so wonderful that in spite of having been on the town, as they say, for years and years he never met anyone with whom he wished to form a lasting connection until he came to Bath, and met me!” Overcome by this reflection, she buried her face in Abby’s lap, saying, in muffled accents: “And he must have met much prettier girls than I am—don’t you think?”

Miss Wendover, aware that her besetting sin was a tendency to give utterance to the first thought which sprang to her mind, swallowed an impulse to retort: “But few so well-endowed!” and replied instead: “Well, as I’m not acquainted with any of the latest beauties I can’t say! But to have made a London beau your first victim is certainly a triumph. Of course I know I shouldn’t say that to you—your Aunt Cornelia would call it administering to your vanity!—so pray don’t expose me to her censure by growing puffed-up, my darling!”

Fanny looked up. “Ah, you don’t understand! Abby, this is a—a lasting attachment! You must believe that! Has my uncle told you that he is a desperate flirt? Such a sad reputation as he has! He told me so himself! But I don’t care a rush, because, although he has frequently fancied himself to be in love, he never wished to marry anyone until he met me! And if my uncle said that he is a trifle rackety he might have spared his breath, for Stacy told me that too. He said—oh, Abby, he said he wasn’t fit to touch my hand, and no one could blame my uncle if he refused to give his consent to our marriage!”

She once more hid her face in Abby’s lap, raising it again to add: “So you see—!”

Abby thought that she did, but she only said, stroking the golden head on her knee: “But what is there in all this to cast you into agitation? Anyone would suppose that your uncle had already refused his consent, and had threatened you both with dire penalties into the bargain!”

“Oh!” breathed Fanny, looking eagerly up at her. “Do you mean that you think he won’t refuse it?”

“Oh, no!” said Abby. “I am very sure that he will! And although I have no very high opinion of his judgment I give him credit for not being such a niddicock as to accept the first offer made to him for your hand! A pretty guardian he would be if he allowed you to become riveted before your first season! Yes, I know that sets up all your bristles, my darling, and makes you ready to pull caps with me, but I beg you won’t! Your uncle may dream of a splendid alliance for you, but you know that I don’t! I only dream of a happy one.”

“I know—oh, I know!” Fanny declared. “And so you will support me! Best of my aunts, say that you will!”

“Why, yes, if you can convince me that your first love will also be your last love!”

“But I have told you!” Fanny said, sitting back on her heels, and staring at her in rising indignation. “I could never love anyone as I love Stacy! Good God, how can you—you!—talk like that to me? I know—my aunt told me!—how my grandfather repulsed the man you loved! And you’ve never loved another, and—and your life was ruined!”

“Well, I thought so at the time,” Abby admitted. A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth. “I must own, however, that whenever that first suitor of mine is recalled to my mind I can only be thankful that your grandfather did repulse him! You know, Fanny, the melancholy truth is that one’s first love very rarely bears the least resemblance to one’s last, and most enduring love! He is the man one marries, and with whom one lives happily ever after!”

“But you have not married!” muttered Fanny rebelliously.

“Very true, but not because I carried a broken heart in my bosom! I have fallen in and out of love a dozen times, I daresay. And as for your Aunt Mary—! She, you know, was always accounted the Beauty of the family, and you might have reckoned her suitors by the score! The first of them was as unlike your Uncle George as any man could be.”

“I thought that my grandfather had arranged that marriage?” interpolated Fanny.

“Oh, no!” replied Abby. “He certainly approved of it, but George was only one of three eligible suitors! He was neither the most handsome nor the most dashing of them, and he bore not the smallest resemblance to any of your aunt’s first loves, but theirs is a very happy marriage, I promise you.”

“Yes, but I am not like my aunt,” returned Fanny. “I daresay she would have been as happy with any other amiable man, because she has a happy disposition, besides being very—very conformable!” She twinkled naughtily up at Abby. “Which I am not! My aunt is like a—oh, a deliriously soft cushion, which may be pushed and pummelled into any shape you choose!—but I—I know what I want, and have a great deal of resolution into the bargain!”

“More like a bolster, in fact,” agreed Abby, with an affability she was far from feeling.

Fanny laughed. “Yes, if you like—worst of my aunts! In any event, I mean to marry Stacy Calverleigh, whatever my uncle may say or do!”

Well aware that few things were more invigorating to high-spirited adolescents than opposition, Abby replied instantly: “Oh, certainly! But your father, you know, was an excellent dragsman, and he was used to say that you should always get over heavy ground as light as possible. I am strongly of the opinion that you—and Mr Calverleigh—should refrain from declaring your intentions to your uncle until you can also present him with proof of the durability of your attachment.”

“He wouldn’t care: you must know he wouldn’t! And if you mean to say that I must wait until I come of age—oh, no, you couldn’t be so heartless! Four whole years—! When you have met Stacy, you will understand!”

“I shall be delighted to meet him, and wish it may be soon.”

“Oh, and so do I!” Fanny said eagerly. “You can’t think how much I miss him! You see, he was obliged to go to London, but he said it would only be for a few days, so he may be in Bath again by the end of the week. Or, at any rate, next week: that you may depend on!”

This was said with a radiant look, and was followed by a shyly ecstatic account of Fanny’s first meeting with Mr Calverleigh, and a description of his manifold charms. Abby listened and commented suitably, but seized the first opportunity that offered of turning Fanny’s thoughts into another channel. She directed her attention to the pile of dress-lengths she had procured in London, and bade her say if she liked them. This answered very well; and in going into raptures over a spider-gauze, wondering whether to have a celestial-blue crape trimmed with ribbon or puff-muslin, and arguing with Abby over the respective merits of Circassian or Cottage sleeves for a morning-dress, Fanny temporarily forgot Mr Calverleigh, and went off to bed presently, to dream (Abby hoped) of fashions.

It seemed, on the following morning, as though she had done so, for she visited her aunt before Abby was out of bed, eager to show her several fashion-plates from the latest issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal,and hopeful of coaxing her to sally forth before breakfast on a visit to the dressmaker on South Parade. In this she failed, Abby pointing out to her that her Aunt Selina, no early riser, would be very much hurt if excluded from the expedition. She added a reminder that in all matters of taste and fashion Selina was infallible.

Fanny pouted, but submitted, knowing the truth of this dictum. She might stigmatize many of Selina’s notions as fusty, but no one had ever cast a slur on Selina’s eye for the elegant and the becoming. In her youth she had been the least good-looking but the most modish of the Wendover girls; in her middle age, and endowed with an easy competence, she enjoyed the reputation of being the best-dressed woman in Bath. If Fanny did not, like Abby, seek her advice, she was shrewd enough to respect her judgment; so that when, presently, she showed Selina the sketch of a grossly overtrimmed walking-dress her secret longing to be seen abroad in this confection was nipped in the bud by Selina’s devastating criticism. “Oh, dear!” said Selina, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “All those frills, and tucks, and ribbons—! So—so deedy!”

So nothing more was seen of that fashion-plate, and in due course all three ladies set out in Miss Wendover’s new barouche for South Parade, where Madame Lisette’s elegant showrooms were situated.

Madame Lisette, who was born Eliza Mudford, enjoyed Royal Patronage, but although she was the particular protégée of the Princess Elizabeth, in whose service she had started her career, and rarely failed to receive orders from Bath’s noblest and most fashionable visitors, the Misses Wendover ranked high amongst her favourite clients: they were rich, they were resident, and they set off to the greatest advantage the fruits of her genius. By no means all her customers were honoured by her personal attention, but no sooner had her head saleswoman caught sight of the barouche drawing up outside the door than she sent an apprentice scurrying upstairs to Madame’s office with the news that the Misses Wendover—all the Misses Wendover!—were about to enter the shop. So, by the time the Misses Wendover had enquired kindly after Miss Snisby’s health, and their footman had delivered into the care of an underling the package containing the silks, and the gauzes, and the muslins purchased in London by Miss Abigail, Miss Mudford had arrived on the scene, suitably but exquisitely gowned in a robe of rich silk but sober hue, and combining with the ease of an expert the deference due to ladies of quality with the chartered familiarities of an old and trusted retainer. No less skill did she show in convincing the youngest Miss Wendover that the style of dress, proper for a young matron, for which that damsel yearned, would not make her look dashing, but on the contrary, positively dowdy. Such was her tact that Fanny emerged from the salon an hour later with the comfortable persuasion that so far from having been treated like a schoolroom miss her taste had been approved, and that the resultant creations would set her in the highest kick of fashion.

This satisfactory session being at an end, the ladies betook themselves to the Pump Room, where it was Selina’s custom (unless the weather were inclement, or some more agreeable diversion offered itself) to imbibe, in small, distasteful sips, a glass of the celebrated waters. Here they encountered a number of friends and acquaintances, prominent amongst whom were General Exford, one of Abby’s more elderly admirers, and Mrs Grayshott, with her daughter, Lavinia, who was Fanny’s chief crony. The two girls soon had their heads together; and while Abby gracefully countered the General’s gallantries Selina, who was sometimes felt to take more interest in the affairs of strangers than in those of her family, engaged Mrs Grayshott in earnest conversation, the object of her sympathetic enquiries being to discover whether Mrs Grayshott had received any news of her only son, last heard of in Calcutta, but living in daily expectation of embarking on the long journey home to England. The look of anxiety on Mrs Grayshott’s rather care-worn face deepened as she shook her head, and replied, with a resolute smile: “Not yet. But my brother has assured me that he has made every imaginable arrangement for his comfort, and I’m persuaded it can’t be long now before he will be with me again. My brother has been so good! Had it been possible, I really believe he would have sent his own doctor out to Oliver! He blames himself for that dreadful sickness, you know, but that is nonsensical. Oliver was very willing to go to India, and how, I ask him, could he have foreseen that the poor boy’s constitution was so ill-suited to the climate? I did not, for he has always enjoyed excellent health.”

“Ah!” said Selina mournfully. “If only it may not have been ruined by this sad misfortune!”

Her tone held out no hope for the future; and as she went on to recount the dismal story of the sufferings endured by just such another case—not personally known to her, but he was a cousin of one of her acquaintances, or, if not a cousin, a great friend,not that it signified—Mrs Grayshott could only be thankful that the arrival of Miss Butterbank on the scene interrupted the disheartening recital before it had reached its death-bed climax. She was able to escape, and lost no time in doing so. Perceiving that the younger Miss Wendover had just shaken off her elderly admirer, she went to join her, forestalling a gentleman in a blue coat and Angola pantaloons, who was bearing purposefully down upon her. Aware of this, she laughingly begged Abigail’s pardon, adding: “I only wish you cared, Abby!”

“I do, and would liefer by far talk to you, ma’am, than to Mr Dunston! How do you do? Not in very good point, I’m afraid—but don’t doubt you will assure me that you’re in high force! This is an anxious time for you.”

“Yes, but I know that if—if anything had happened—anything bad—I must have had news of it, so I won’t let myself fall into dejection, or post up to London, until my brother sends me word. When that happens, I shall cast Lavinia on your hands, and be off. I was so very much obliged to Miss Wendover for offering to take charge of her! But it is you who will do that: you don’t object?”

“My dear ma’am, how can you ask? I am naturally cast into the greatest agitation by the very thought of having so onerous a burden thrust upon me! It is only civility that prompts me to say that I shall be charmed to take care of Lavinia.”

Mrs Grayshott smiled, and pressed her hand. “I knew I might depend on you. I don’t think she will be a trouble to you. What I do think—Abby, may I speak frankly to you?”

“If you please! Though I fancy I know what it is that you do think. Fanny?”

Mrs Grayshott nodded. “You know, then? I’m glad you’ve come home: I have been feeling a little anxious. Your sister is a dear kind creature, but—”

She hesitated, and Abby said coolly: “Very true! A dear kind nodcock! She seems to have fallen quite under the spell of this Calverleigh.”

“Well, he—he is very engaging,” said Mrs Grayshott reluctantly. “Only there is something about him which I can’t quite like! It is difficult to explain, because I haven’t any cause to take him in dislike. Except—” Again she hesitated, but upon being urged to continue, said: “Abby, no man could be blamed for falling in love with Fanny, but I don’t think that a man of principle, so much older than she is, would wish her—far less urge her!—to do what might easily set people in a bustle. His attentions are too particular to suit my old-fashioned notions. That makes me into a Bath quiz, I dare say, but you know, my dear, when a man of fashion and address makes a child of Fanny’s age the object of his attentions it is not to be wondered at that she should be dazzled into losing her head, or be easily brought to believe that the rules of conduct, in which she has been reared, are outmoded—quite provincial, in fact!”

Abby nodded. “ Such as the impropriety of strolling about the Sydney Gardens with him? Give me a round tale, ma’am!—Have there been other—oh, clandestine meetings?”

“I am afraid so. Oh, nothing of a serious nature, or that is generally known, or—or that you will not speedily put an end to! I might not have spoken to you, if that had been all, for it’s no bread-and-butter of mine, and I don’t relish the office of being your intelligencer, but I have some reason to think that it is not quite all, and am a great deal too fond of Fanny not to tell you that certain things I have learned from what Lavinia—in all innocence!—has let fall, I apprehend that this unfortunate affair may be rather more serious than I had at first supposed. To what extent Lavinia is in Fanny’s confidence I don’t know, and—I must confess—shrink from enquiring, because perhaps, if she thought I was trying to discover a secret reposed in her, she would fob me off, even prevaricate, and certainly, in the future, guard her tongue when she talked to me. That may seem foolish to you: the thing is she has been so close a companion to me, so open and trusting in her affection—” Her voice became suspended. She shook her head, saying, after a moment’s struggle: “I can’t explain it to you!”

“There is not the least need,” Abby responded. “I understand you perfectly, ma’am. Don’t fear me! I promise you I shan’t let Fanny so much as suspect that Lavinia betrayed her confidence. Let me be frank with you! I’ve every reason to suppose that Calverleigh is a fortune-hunter, and it has been made abundantly clear to me that Fanny believes herself to have formed a lasting passion for him. I don’t know if Calverleigh hopes to win my brother’s consent to the match, but I should very much doubt it. So in what sort is the wind? Does he hope to enlist my support? Is he indulging himself with a flirtation? Or has he the intention of eloping with Fanny?” Her eyes widened, as she saw the quick look turned towards her, and a laugh trembled in her throat. “‘My dear ma’am—! I was only funning!”

“Yes, I know, but—Abby, sometimes I wonder if our parents were right when they forbade us to read novels! It is all the fault of the Circulating Libraries!”

“Putting romantical notions into girls’ heads?” said Abby, smiling a little. “I don’t think so: I had a great many myself, and was never permitted to read any but the most improving works. I might be wrong, but I fancy that however much a girl may admire, or envy, the heroine of some romance, who finds herself in the most extraordinary situations; and however much she may picture herself in those situations, she knows it is nothing more than a child’s game of make-believe, and that she would not, in fact, behave at all like her heroine. Like my sister’s children, when they capture me in the shrubbery, and inform me that they are brigands, and mean to hold me to ransom!”

Her smile was reflected in Mrs Grayshott’s eyes, but she sighed, and said: “It may be so—I don’t know! But when a girl falls in love, and with—oh, with what they call a man of the town!—who is practised in the art of seduction—?”

“Well, I don’t know either,” said Abby, “but it occurs to me, ma’am, that your man of the town, assuming him to be in search of a fortune, would scarcely choose a girl four years short of her majority! Indeed, eight years short of it, because Fanny will not come into full possession of her inheritance until she is five-and-twenty. I’m not very well-informed in such matters, but would not that be rather too long to—to live on the expectation?”

“Is he aware of this?” Mrs Grayshott asked. “Does Fanny know it?”

Abby’s eyes, swiftly raised, held an arrested expression. She said, after a moment’s pause: “No. That is, the question has never arisen. I don’t know, but I should suppose she doesn’t. I see that it must be my business to enlighten Calverleigh—if it should be necessary to do so. Meanwhile,—”

“Meanwhile,” said Mrs Grayshott, with a significant smile, “Mr Dunston is advancing towards us, determined to wrest you from me, and so I shall take my leave of you! Don’t think me impertinent if I say how much I wish I could see you happily established, Abby!”

She moved away as she spoke, leaving the road open to the gentleman in the blue coat and Angola pantaloons, who came up, saying simply: “You have come back at last! Bath has been a desert without you.”

She turned this off with a laughing rejoinder; and, after enquiring politely how his mother did, and exchanging a little trivial conversation with him, said mendaciously that she saw her sister beckoning to her, and left him.

Miss Wendover, who had observed with satisfaction the presence of Mr Dunston in the Pump Room, sighed. Like Mrs Grayshott, she wished very much to see Abby happily established, and could think of no one who would make her a better husband than Peter Dunston. He was a very respectable man, the owner of a comfortable property situated not many miles from Bath; his manners were easy and agreeable; and Miss Wendover had it on the authority of his widowed mother, who resided with him, that his amiability was only rivalled by the elegance of his mind, and the superiority of his understanding. Such was the excellence of his character that he had never caused his mother to suffer a moment’s anxiety. One might have supposed that Abby, in imminent danger of dwindling into an old maid, would have welcomed the addresses of so eligible a suitor, instead of declaring she had never been able to feel the least tendre for men of uniform virtues.

She certainly felt none for Peter Dunston, but Miss Wendover was mistaken when she suspected, in moods of depression, that her dear but perverse sister had set her face against marriage. Abby was fully alive to the disadvantages of her situation, and she had more than once considered the possibility of accepting an offer from Mr Dunston. He would be a kind, if unexciting husband; he enjoyed all the comfort and consequence of a large house and an easy fortune; and in marrying him she would remain within reach of Selina. On the other hand, no romance would attend such a marriage, and Abby, who, in her salad days had declined the flattering offer made her by Lord Broxbourne, still believed that somewhere there existed the man for whom she would feel much more than mere friendly liking. She had once believed, too, that she was bound, sooner or later, to encounter him. She had never done so, and it had begun to seem unlikely that she ever would; but without indulging morbid repinings she was disinclined to accept a substitute who could only be second-best in her eyes.

At the moment, however, her mind was not exercised by this question, being fully occupied by the more important problem of how best, and most painlessly, to detach Fanny from the undesirable Mr Calverleigh. Mrs Grayshott was no tattlemonger; and since she had a great deal of reserve Abby knew that only a stringent sense of duty could have forced her to overcome her distaste of talebearing. What she knew, either from her own observation, or from the innocent disclosures of her daughter, she plainly thought to be too serious to be withheld from Fanny’s aunt. At the same time, thought Abigail, dispassionately considering her, the well-bred calm of her manners concealed an over-anxious disposition, which led her to magnify possible dangers. The tragic circumstances of her life, coupled as they were with a sickly constitution, had not encouraged her in optimism. Married to an officer of the Line, and the mother of three hopeful children, she had endured years of separation, always looking forward to a blissful reunion, until her dreams were shattered by the news of Captain Grayshott’s death, during the Siege of Burgos. This blow was followed, less than a year later, by the illness, and lingering death of her younger son, and the break-down of her own health, so that it was hardly surprising that she should be readier to foresee disaster than a happy outcome.

Not that she ever betrayed her lowness of spirit. If she could be brought to speak of her trials, which was seldom, and only to a few trusted friends, she said that she was by far more fortunate than many soldiers’ widows, because she had been supported throughout by her brother, of whose affection and generosity she could not speak without emotion. He was an East India merchant—but, as the highest and most antiquated sticklers in Bath acknowledged, a most gentlemanly person—and a bachelor, commonly said to be rolling in riches. Not only had he coaxed and bullied his sister into accepting an allowance from him which enabled her to establish herself with modest elegance in Edgar Buildings, but he had claimed the right to maintain his surviving nephew at Rugby, and his only niece at Miss Trimble’s select seminary in Bath. It was generally supposed that Oliver Grayshott was destined to be his heir, and although there were those who thought it rather too bad of Mr Balking to have sent his poor sister’s sole remaining son to India, it was almost universally agreed that she would have been culpably in the wrong had she refused to be parted from him.

She had not done so, and now, as several persons had foreseen from the outset, he was returning to her, if not at death’s door, at the best in a state of total collapse.

Abby, blessed with a cheerful mind, took a more optimistic view of Oliver’s case, but she did realize the anxiety which Mrs Grayshott must be feeling, and was inclined to think that the consequent agitation of her nerves might well have led her to exaggerate the strength of Fanny’s infatuation.

The following three days did nothing to promote such a comfortable notion. There could be no doubt that Fanny, dazzled by the attentions of a London beau, had plunged headlong into her first love-affair, and was ripe for any outrageous folly. Wholly unpractised in the art of dissimulation, her spasmodic attempts to appear unconcerned betrayed her youth, and might, under different circumstances, have amused Abby. But it was not long before Abby found much more to dismay than to amuse her. She was herself impulsive, often impatient of convention, and, in her girlhood, rebellious, but she had been reared far more strictly than Fanny, and it came as a disagreeable shock to her when she discovered that Fanny watched for the postman every day, and, at the first glimpse of his scarlet coat and cockaded hat, slipped out of the room to intercept the delivery of letters to the house. Never, at her most rebellious, had Abby dreamed of engaging in clandestine correspondence! Such conduct, if it were known, must sink Fanny below reproach.

Every feeling was offended; and had she not been tolerably certain, from Fanny’s downcast looks, that no letter from Mr Calverleigh had reached her she thought she must have abandoned caution, and taken the girl roundly to task. At first inclined to give Mr Calverleigh credit for propriety, a little quiet reflection made her realize that if marriage was indeed his object he would scarcely commit an act of such folly as to write letters to Fanny which would be more than likely to fall into the hands of her aunts. His aim must be to propitiate Fanny’s guardians; and in his dealings with Selina he had shown that he knew it. Abby thought that he had succeeded all too well. Selina had been very much shocked by the disclosures made to her, but she hoped, in a nebulous way, that perhaps, after all, they would be found to be untrue; and she was moved to what Abby considered an excess of sensibility by the spectacle of her niece running to look eagerly out of the window every time a vehicle drew up outside the house. “Poor, poor child!” she mourned. “It is so very affecting! I do not know how you can remain unmoved! I had not thought you so—so unfeeling,Abby!”

“I’m not unmoved,” responded Abby crossly. “I am most deeply moved—with a strong desire to give Fanny the finest trimming of her life! I’d do it, too, if I didn’t fear that it would encourage her in the belief that she is a persecuted heroine!”

In this noble resolve to abstain from gratifying her desire she was strengthened by Fanny’s reception of the only piece of advice she permitted herself to give that love-lorn damsel: that she should not wear her heart on her sleeve. Chin up, eyes flashing, flying her colours in her cheeks, Fanny said: “I am not ashamed of loving Stacy! Why should I dissemble?”

Quite a number of pungent retorts rose to Abby’s tongue, and it said much for her self-control that she uttered none of them. Intuition had made Fanny suspect already that her favourite aunt was ranged on the side of Stacy Calverleigh’s enemies; she was slightly on the defensive, not yet hostile, but ready to show hackle. No useful purpose would be served by coming to cuffs with her, Abby thought, and therefore held her peace.