“What are you going to do?” she repeated in a voice as sweet and as full of dramatic expression as her eyes. “If you have promised to go to-night, how can you break your promise?”
“Breaking my promise does not matter at all,” said Fanny Berrien, impatiently; “but getting rid of Lennox Kyrle without trouble does matter. And how it is to be done I do not know, unless you will help me.”
“I will do anything—anything in the world!” said Aimée, fervently. “But how can you make up your mind to give him up?”
“It does not exactly mean giving him up,” said Fanny, “though I suppose it will come to that at last,” she added with a sigh. “But just now I only want him to understand that it is quite impossible for me to go with him. He is so impetuous and rash, he will not understand at all how I am placed; and if I do not meet him at the time when he expects me, he will be quite capable of coming for me—as he has threatened to do—and then there would be a fearful state of affairs!”
“He must be like young Lochinvar,” said Aimée. “I should think you would adore such a lover as that.”
“He has given me more trouble than any other man in the world, so I suppose I ought to adore—or else hate him,” said Miss Berrien. “Of course, you don’t understand about these things, Aimée, and I ought not to be talking of them to a child like you, only I have nobody else to talk to; but Lennox Kyrle is one of the men to whom one can’t say no. He has more power over me than any one else in the world, and yet I am not at all sure that I want to marry him.”
“Why not?” asked Aimée, who was drinking in these new ideas as a plant absorbs water.
“Oh, for a great many reasons,” replied the other. “For one thing, I am not sure that I want to be domineered over for the rest of my life; and then he has nothing in the way of fortune—at least nothing to speak of. Now, Aimée, you know it is not at all pleasant to want money and not have any.”
“No,” said Aimée decidedly—she evidently understood this—“it is not at all pleasant.”
“And Mr. Meredith is rich, and will be richer; and he is devoted to me, and mamma is anxious that I shall marry him, and I like him very well—when I don’t see Lennox! So I have nearly made up my mind not to see him any more.”