“Do the same for you some day.”
There was a pause before the answer came, and Fanny prophesied disaster. At first he had left London; when that idea was abandoned it was for the certainty that she had so disgusted him at the last interview that he would have no more to do with her.
“The more right I thought him, the more disagreeable I became. My dear, depend upon it, he is blessing his stars for his escape. And his mind once made up, no little inveiglements of luncheon will move him. Millie, what possessed me to be such a wretch?”
Her presentiments were unfounded. Mr Elliot wrote to accept, and Fanny’s mood varied between mirth which sparkled sometimes through tears, and a dignity which her friends found comic. When he arrived, she was in her room. Millie went to fetch her, and was told that it was no use, she should not come down.
“Two shy people will be ridiculously unmanageable, and you shan’t be saddled with them. Besides, I suppose he is roseately triumphant?”
A happy inspiration made Millie assure her that he looked as if he had not slept for a week. Lady Fanny fidgeted.
“Absurd!”
“I only answer your question.”
“Well, go. I will see about it. But don’t expect me,” she called after her, warningly.
Luncheon was announced before she appeared, with dignity in the ascendant. She hardly glanced at Mr Elliot, and her embarrassment was greater than his, for he carried the look of a man who had been through the worst, and has nothing to fear. Ice all round and about. Mrs Ravenhill and Millie made heroic efforts to warm the chilly atmosphere, but do what they would, it enveloped them Fanny without a tongue had changed to lead and to a stranger.