“You do not know it?”
“No, I wish I did. Which of them are you reading? ‘Country Walks.’ That is not one that I care about, it is a mere hash of old recollections; but there are some very sensible and superior ones, so that I have heard it sometimes doubted whether they are man’s or woman’s writing. For my part, I think them too earnest to be a man’s; men always play with their subject.”
“Oh, yes,” said Fanny, “I am sure only a lady could have written anything so sweet as that about flowers in a sick-room; it so put me in mind of the lovely flowers you used to bring me one at a time, when I was ill at Cape Town.”
There was no more sense to be had after those three once fell upon their reminiscences.
That night, after having betrayed her wakefulness by a movement in her bed, Alison Williams heard her sister’s voice, low and steady, saying, “Ailie, dear, be it what it may, guessing is worse than certainty.”
“Oh, Ermine, I hoped—I know nothing—I have nothing to tell.”
“You dread something,” said Ermine; “you have been striving for unconcern all the evening, my poor dear, but surely you know, Ailie, that nothing is so bad while we share it.”
“And I have frightened you about nothing.”
“Nothing! nothing about Edward?”
“Oh, no, no!”