“I dare say,” replied Fanny. “You are romantic, and you would enjoy—or you think you would enjoy—dangers and difficulties. But as for me, I like the comforts of life.”
Ten minutes later Aimée was listening to the soft, regular breathing which told how the speaker was enjoying one of the comforts of life. It was incomprehensible to the girl who was still tingling with excitement from head to foot, and felt as if sleep would never visit her eyelids; but her thoughts did not long dwell on Fanny. They went back to the lover, for whom her tender heart ached as she pictured him returning alone to the yacht which waited the coming bride in order to spread its wings for the South. What a cruel thing it was to let him come—only to disappoint him! Indignation and pity were mingled in her mind; and as hour after hour of the silent night passed, she still lay wide awake, her great, solemn eyes, as Fanny called them, fixed on darkness, but her fancy seeing plainly the starlit deck of the Ariel, where a figure paced alone.
V.
Toward daylight, weariness overcame even excited imagination, and Aimée fell asleep. When she awoke it was from a dream in which she fancied herself on board the Ariel, and that Fanny had come to take her away. “Aimée, Aimée!” said the familiar voice; and when she woke, it was to find Fanny’s voice indeed sounding in her ears, and Fanny’s eyes anxiously gazing at her.
“What is the matter?” she cried, rousing herself at once. “Have I slept very late? Is breakfast ready?”
“Breakfast is over long ago,” Fanny answered. “I would not disturb you, for I thought you had certainly earned the right to sleep as late as you pleased; and fortunately mamma never comes down to breakfast, you know. But I have come to rouse you now, because something dreadful has happened. O Aimée, what do you think?—Mr. Meredith saw you last night!”
“Mr. Meredith!” cried Aimée. She sat up in bed, a picture of consternation. “It is impossible!” she gasped. “I saw no one. He could not have seen me.”
“There is no doubt about it,” said Fanny. “He certainly saw you—saw you talking to Lennox, and he thought it was me.”