“So peaceful after the city.”
“I prefer town.”
“Fanny!”
“Uncle Lawrence.”
“What are you going to do?”
She had not looked at him before, but now she raised her eyes to his. She might as well have closed them. Dropping them, she looked upon the floor and said nothing.
“I’m sorry for you, Fanny.”
She looked fierce. There was a snake-like stealthiness in her appearance, which Alfred’s mother saw across the room and trembled. Then she raised her eyes again to her uncle’s, and said, with a kind of hissing sneer,
“Indeed, Uncle Lawrence, thank you for nothing. It’s not very hard for you to be sorry.”
Not dismayed, not even surprised by this speech, Lawrence was about to reply, but she struck in,