‘Has Fanny sunk so low as this? and so soon, too,’ said he, in a low voice, rendered hoarse by the agitation of his feelings. ‘Has she who ran away from her home become in so short a time a midnight frequenter of overcharged, and the common associate of the vicious portion of a class, the reputable members of which she once looked down upon with disdain?’
‘Spare me, Robert,’ said Fanny, in a faint and broken voice, and without removing her hands from her countenance, ‘You know not what I have suffered—what I am suffering now.’
‘I can easily believe that,’ returned Robert, surveying her with a look of mournful interest. ‘You have made me suffer, too—more deeply than I can find words to express; but I will not reproach you. While you have a heart to feel, if vice does not harden it to the core, you will find reproaches there which I cannot spare you.’
‘I do,’ exclaimed Fanny, sobs choking her voice, and the pearly tears trickling down her hands. ‘You cannot reproach me more severely than my own heart does at this moment. If you knew all that I have endured and am enduring you would pity me.’
‘Pity you!’ said Robert, who had become perfectly sober the moment he recognized the lost girl upon whom he was now gazing. ‘I have never ceased to pity you since the moment of my return to reason after that hour of madness that ruined both myself and you.’
‘It was all my fault,’ sobbed Fanny, weeping as if her heart would break.
‘It matters little now, whether the fault was wholly yours or partly mine,’ said Robert, taking a hasty turn up and down the room. ‘It was more the fault of that villain Blodget: may heaven’s avenging lightnings scathe and blast him! May his own happiness and peace of mind be wrecked as ours have been!’
Fanny sobbed bitterly, and dared not raise her eyes to Robert’s agitated countenance. The young man took two or three turns up and down the bar-room, and then he became a little calmer, and pausing near the table at which he had been sitting, threw a furtive glance towards the weeping Fanny.
‘And you have really fallen so low as your presence here seems to imply?’ said he, endeavoring to steady his voice, though it was low and tremulous, and his lips quivered as he spoke.
‘Imagine the worse, and you will know all,’ replied Fanny, in a broken and faltering voice. ‘I have wished a hundred times that I were at the bottom of the bay, but I cannot do it. I pray for death, that I may be spared further misery and sin, and yet I live.’