“That's so much, at any rate,” said he.
“Do you mean to say that you don't think it quite wonderful, Eddy?” cried Susy. “And getting twenty pounds for it—twenty pounds! And you say something about it being too late!”
“I only judged from the way Fanny shook her head,” said he.
“Oh, that was not what Fanny was thinking at all—now was it, Fanny?” said Susy encouragingly to her sister.
“I don't know quite what I meant or what I mean even now,” replied Fanny. “It made me feel for the moment somehow as if I had appeared in a street full of people before I had quite finished dressing!”
“Ah!” exclaimed Edward.
“But that is nonsense, dear,” said Susy, still consolatory. “The book is not yourself.”
“Not all myself, but part of myself—that is what I feel,” said Fanny.
“I cannot see that that is so. You are you—you yourself quite apart from the book. Whatever the book may be, you will still remain Fanny Burney, the best daughter and the best sister in the world. What does it matter if people—foolish people who know nothing about it—laugh at it or say nasty things about it? Do you think that that will make any of us like you the less?”
She put her arm about Fanny and kissed her on the cheek, and Fanny's tears began to fall. The young man standing by felt more uneasy than he had ever felt in his life. He crossed the room and looked out of the window, turning his back upon the scene of the sisters. He did not know what to say to a girl when once she allowed herself to weep. He wished with all his heart that he had not been dragged into this business. But Fanny's tears convinced him that his first impression of her reception of her book was the correct one: she was, like other young mothers he had heard of, bitterly repentant when it was too late.