“Oh!” she cried, “how you startled me with your great, solemn eyes! You foolish child, have you not been asleep? I hoped when you went away so early you would take a good sleep, and be fresh and ready for my little errand.”
“I am ready,” answered Aimée, “but as for having gone to sleep, how could I? It is all too exciting!”
“One would think it was you who were going to elope,” said Fanny, putting down her lamp. “As for me, I am so tired of men, that if it were not for mamma I would go into a convent, where I would never hear of them again. You can not fancy how Mr. Meredith has been tormenting me, until I have half promised to marry him just to get rid of him.”
“But you will not get rid of him if you marry him,” said Aimée, with her eyes more great and more solemn than ever.
“Simpleton!” returned Fanny. “Of course not; but between promising and doing a thing there is a very great difference, as poor Lennox will find out to-night. Dear me!”—sitting down meditatively on the side of Aimée’s bed—“I wonder what made me such a fool as to imagine for a moment that I would go with him? The mere thought makes me shudder—to be running off wildly and being seasick (the idea of my forgetting that I always am seasick!) instead of going to bed comfortably and getting up to-morrow to torment Mr. Meredith by flirting with one of those handsome Englishmen!”
“O Fanny, are you not ashamed!” said Aimée. “To think what Mr. Kyrle must be feeling at this moment, while you—”
“Yes, really, I am ashamed!” said Fanny, hastily. “It is abominable conduct, I know. But you see I am shallow—shallow as that”—indicating about a quarter the depth of her little finger—“and I can’t help it if one nail drives out another in my mind. I wonder if it is my mind or my heart, by the by? Well, anyway, in me. It is not my fault that I am shallow; and, on the whole, I think I rather like it. One has a much easier life. Isn’t it a great deal wiser for me to make the best of things as they are, for instance, than to be distracted about Lennox Kyrle, who I really like better than anybody else in the world, if I let myself think of him?”
“I—I don’t know,” said Aimée, who found this question too deep for her solving. “You must decide, of course.”
“I have decided,” said Fanny. “Things are best as they are. But now we must have done with talking and proceed to action. In the first place, I will tell you exactly what you must say to Mr. Kyrle when you meet him.”
“Yes,” answered Aimée, beginning to shiver at that anticipation.