“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
“Just this minute.”
“Oh!” said Fanny. “You mean when I repeated what she said? That’s hardly the same thing, George.”
He was not enough interested to argue the point. “I don’t think you’ll convince anybody that mother’s unfeeling,” he said indifferently.
“I’m not trying to convince anybody. I mean merely that in my opinion—well, perhaps it may be just as wise for me to keep my opinions to myself.”
She paused expectantly, but her possible anticipation that George would urge her to discard wisdom and reveal her opinion was not fulfilled. His back was toward her, and he occupied himself with opinions of his own about other matters. Fanny may have felt some disappointment as she rose to withdraw.
However, at the last moment she halted with her hand upon the latch of the screen door.
“There’s one thing I hope,” she said. “I hope at least she won’t leave off her full mourning on the very anniversary of Wilbur’s death!”
The light door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize her departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him being that she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral millinery. Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly concerned with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied with a dialogue taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss Lucy Morgan. As he beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at his feet. “George, you must forgive me!” she cried. “Papa was utterly wrong! I have told him so, and the truth is that I have come to rather dislike him as you do, and as you always have, in your heart of hearts. George, I understand you: thy people shall be my people and thy gods my gods. George, won’t you take me back?”