“Perhaps you are right,” said he, after a few moments of frowning thought. “Yes. I see now that it might have been wiser if I had begun with ourselves and then——”
Fanny had turned the handle. She re-entered the dining-room, and the moment that she appeared silence fell upon the company, and once again she was conscious of many eyes gazing at her and of horrid smiles and a smirk. That was another ordeal for the shy little Miss Burney—it was an evening of ordeals.
She walked straight across the room to her stepmother.
“I am ready to go away now,” she said. “We have never stayed at any house so long when we only came for tea. I am tired to death.”
She took care, of course, that Mrs. Burney only should hear her; and Mrs. Burney, being well aware that Fanny was not one to complain unless with ample cause, charitably interposed between her and Mrs. Barlowe, whom she saw bearing down upon her from the other side of the room.
“Fanny and I will say our good-night to you now, my dear Martha,” she said. “You have treated us far too kindly. That must be our excuse for staying so long. When people drop in to tea they do not, as a rule, stop longer than an hour, as you know. But you overwhelmed us.”
“I was hoping—” began Mrs. Barlowe, trying to get on to Fanny, but by the adroitness of Mrs. Burney, not succeeding. “I was hoping—you know what I was hoping—we were all hoping—expecting—they were in the drawing-room long enough.”
Mrs. Burney gave her a confidential look, which she seemed to interpret easily enough. She replied by a confidential nod—the nod of one who understands a signal.
“Mum it shall be, then,” she whispered. “Not a word will come from me, simply good-night; but we could all have wished—never mind, Thomas will tell us all.”
Mrs. Burney allowed her to pass on to Fanny, having obtained her promise not to bother the girl—that was how Mrs. Burney framed the promise in her own mind—and Mrs. Barlowe kept faith with her, and even persuaded Alderman Kensit, who was approaching them slowly with a sheaf of notes in his hand, to defer their delivery in the form of a speech until the young woman had gone.