Tired of her position, Fanny jumped up and took a spoonful of sweet jelly from a dish on the table.
‘Have some?’
‘Come here again. I’ve something more to tell you. Something very important.’
She could only be prevailed upon to take a seat near him. Horace, beset with doubts as to his prudence, but unable to keep the secret, began to recount the story of his meeting with Mrs. Damerel, whom he had now seen for the second time. Fanny’s curiosity, instantly awakened, grew eager as he proceeded. She questioned with skill and pertinacity, and elicited many more details than Nancy Lord had been able to gather.
‘You’ll promise me not to say a word to any one?’ pleaded Horace.
‘I won’t open my lips. But you’re quite sure she’s as old as you say?’
‘Old enough to be my mother, I assure you.’
The girl’s suspicions were not wholly set at rest, but she made no further display of them.
‘Now just think what an advantage it might be to you, to know her,’ Horace pursued. ‘She’d introduce you at once to fashionable society, really tip-top people. How would you like that?’
‘Not bad,’ was the judicial reply.