14
Fanny listened carelessly to her husband. After eight years, listening to what Aubrey had to say had become unnecessary. Because his talk never changed. What he said yesterday he would say tomorrow. He prided himself on this. He explained that it revealed him a man of unswerving principles. Fanny, who had become a rather sarcastic person, kept her answer to herself. A man of unswerving principles was a great asset to the community. But a terrible bore to his home.
She sat watching Henrietta sew. There was a placidity about Henrietta that always irritated her. Henrietta was still pretty although beginning to fade. Her eyes were colorless and her lips were getting thinner. But she seemed happy and Fanny wondered about this.
Mr. Mackay seemed very attentive to Henrietta. Of course, Mr. Mackay was Aubrey's partner and a friend of her brother, George. But it was odd to call on Henrietta unexpectedly and find her talking alone to a man in her library. Even to Mr. Mackay.
Fanny was suspicious about such things. She had been utterly faithful to Aubrey during their married life and this fidelity, somehow, had developed in her an attitude of chronic suspicion concerning the fidelity of other women. It was her habit when visiting her friends to sit and speculate upon their possible immoralities. She had frequently got herself into trouble by setting scandalous rumors afloat.
"Henry Thorpe and Gwendolyn see quite a great deal of each other," she would say. "More than we know, I think. I wonder what Mrs. Thorpe thinks about it. You know Gwendolyn, for all her pretenses, is an out and out sensual type."
No one was immune from Fanny's speculations. In fact the more incongruous the idea of any one's sinfulness seemed, the more enthusiastically Fanny embraced it.
She was more than half aware that thinking about others in immoral situations seemed to excite herself. She would endeavor to introduce a note of indignation into her speculations. But the note was too forced to deceive her, although it deceived others. And she finally abandoned herself to the thrill which thinking evilly of others stirred in her.
She would often allow her suspicions to become detailed. Merely to suspect a woman of being immoral was not as satisfying as to figure the manner of her sin, the play by play, word by word drama of her seduction. She relished such fancied details. Suspecting others of immorality enabled Fanny to enjoy vicariously situations which she had as a matter of course denied herself.
Her love for Aubrey had not changed. It had, in fact, grown or at least become inflated by habit. At the beginning of their union she had suspected him of being a hypocrite. She had immediately resented his virtue. Then for a short time she had figured out that he must be unfaithful to her, that this accounted for his virtue.