“Only one, dear,” said Fanny dryly.
“Why only one?”
“Mr. Severne will not go.”
“That he will: I made a point of it.”
“You did, dear? but still he will not go.”
There was something in this, and in Fanny's tone, that startled Zoe, and puzzled her sorely. She turned round upon her with flashing eye, and said, “No mysteries, please, dear. Why won't he go with me wherever I ask him to go? or, rather, what makes you think he won't?”
Said Fanny, thoughtfully: “I could not tell you, all in a moment, why I feel so positive. One puts little things together that are nothing apart: one observes faces; I do, at least. You don't seem, to me, to be so quick at that as most girls. But, Zoe dear, you know very well one often knows a thing for certain, yet one doesn't know exactly what makes one know it.”
Now Zoe's amour propre was wounded by Fanny's suggestion that Severne would not go to Homburg, or, indeed, to the world's end with her; so she drew herself up in her grand way, and folded her arms and said, a little haughtily, “Then tell me what is it you know about him and me, without knowing how on earth you know it.”
The supercilious tone and grand manner nettled Fanny, and it wasn't “brooch day;” she stood up to her lofty cousin like a little game-cock. “I know this,” said she, with heightened cheek, and flashing eyes and a voice of steel, “you will never get Mr. Edward Severne into one room with Zoe Vizard and Ina Klosking.”
Zoe Vizard turned very pale, but her eyes flashed defiance on her friend.