"Well, you are right. Come, put on your bonnet, we will go out."
Fanny obeyed; but with less ready delight than usual. And they took their way through lanes over which hung, still in the cool air, the leaves of the yellow autumn.
Fanny was the first to break silence.
"Do you know," she said, timidly, "that people here think me very silly? —do you think so too?"
Vaudemont was startled by the simplicity of the question, and hesitated.
Fanny looked up in his dark face anxiously and inquiringly.
"Well," she said, "you don't answer?"
"My dear Fanny, there are some things in which I could wish you less childlike and, perhaps, less charming. Those strange snatches of song, for instance!"
"What! do you not like me to sing? It is my way of talking."
"Yes; sing, pretty one! But sing something that we can understand,—sing the songs I have given you, if you will. And now, may I ask why you put to me that question?"
"I have forgotten," said Fanny, absently, and looking down.