‘Well, where do you live?’ said Blodget in a tone of vexation. ‘I cannot stand talking to you in the street—besides, it rains.’
‘Ah, you are ashamed of me?’ returned Fanny in a tone of bitterness, though her voice trembled and her lips quivered as she spoke. ‘Why were you not rather ashamed to become the destroyer of my happiness, my innocence, perhaps, my soul?’
‘Pooh, nonsense, Fan,’ returned Blodget, the glow of conscious guilt mantling upon his cheeks, in spite of his assumed nonchalance. ‘You are in a melancholy mood to-night, and if you mean to stand here talking like that, I shall rush off. It is getting late, and you had better go home.’
‘Home!’ ejaculated Fanny, with a bitter intonation, and hot tears gathered in her dark eyes, and trembled on her black and silken lashes.
‘Bill!’ said Blodget, to a pale, shabby dissipated-looking young man, who came out of the bar-room at that moment—‘bring a hack!’
In a few minutes the vehicle rolled up to the spot, and the driver jumped from his seat to open the door. Fanny allowed her seducer to hand her into the hack but her thoughts were wandering, and she felt a slight degree of surprise when Blodget got in, and seated himself by her side.
‘Where to, sir,’ said the driver, as he closed the door.
Blodget looked at Fanny, who mentioned the name of the street in which she lived, and in a few minutes the hack was dashing over the miry road. Fanny leaned back in silence, and when her companion passed his arm around her waist, she shrank from his touch, and he instantly removed it.
‘What is the use of your being angry with me, Fanny?’ said he, in a deprecating tone. ‘What has passed can never be recalled, and had better be forgotten. Let us—’
‘Forgotten?’ exclaimed Fanny, raising her dark eyes sadly and reproachfully to his countenance, as he saw by the light of a lamp which the coach passed at the moment. ‘Do you think that I can ever forget what I have been or what I am now? That I can forget there was a time when I was innocent and happy, and cease to contrast that time with the wretched present?’