It was very perfect acting, and yet, somehow, it did not make the man who watched it lower his guard. He had had no great experience with just this sort of thing, and yet—he had seen Fanny act before, and had detected in her acting that it never once forgot itself in the grip of a genuine emotion. When she ceased speaking, and it became necessary to answer her, he felt his way with every word he spoke.
“Have you told all this to Miss Lockhart?” was the unexpected question he put to her.
Imperceptibly Fanny winced, but she replied quietly: “Nan knows much, but not all. She doesn’t quite understand me, I think. I can never make her realize that flippant and frivolous as I can be on the surface, underneath something runs deep.”
“Yet she must want to assure herself of that, she’s so finely genuine herself. Ever since I have known her I have thought her one of the best-balanced young women I ever knew. She seems very devoted to you. And as for her faith in things unseen, I am sure it is very real. I don’t see how you could do better than to put yourself under her tuition.”
“I have tried, Mr. Black—I assure you I have. Nan and I are dear friends, and I respect and admire her devotedly. But I can’t talk about these things even to her. Somehow I can’t to any woman. I need—I think I need a man’s point of view. And not only a man’s but—a priest’s.”
Her eyes lifted themselves slowly to his, and there was a spiritual sort of beseeching in them which very nearly veiled and covered the terribly human wish which was behind. For a moment Black wondered with a heart-sinking throb of anxiety if he were right in distrusting her motive in coming to him as he had thus far distrusted it. How should he dare not to respond to her need, if it were real? How send her from him unanswered and unsatisfied, if he could really do anything for her? Why, merely because she was fascinating to look upon, must she be a deceiver; while if she sat before him with a plain face and red, white-lashed eyes, he would be far surer that she was in real distress. It wasn’t fair to her, was it, to doubt her without the proof?
While he hesitated over what to say to this appeal, all at once he was confronted with a new situation; one ever calculated to weaken and undermine the judgment of man. Fanny sat close beside his study desk, from the opposite side of which he faced her. When his silence had lasted for a full minute she quietly turned and laid her arm upon the desk—a roundly white arm, the fair flesh showing through the sheer black fabric of her close sleeve—and buried her face in her arm. With her free hand she found her handkerchief—one of the two with which she had provided herself—and then Black saw that she was softly sobbing, and seemingly trying with much difficulty to control herself.
Well—was this acting, too? Can a woman weep at will? And if she were as unhappy as she seemed, what was he to do about it? It was an extremely uncomfortable and disquieting situation, and Black wondered for a moment if he could possibly see it through without blundering. He was wishing ardently that he had a mother or a sister at hand. There was only Mrs. Hodder whom he could call in, and she was assuredly not the person to act as duenna to this young woman. To bring her in would be to send Fanny out. And was it possible that this was really his opportunity, and that he must forget everything except to use it for all that there was in it?
“I’m sorry you are unhappy,” he said. “Of course it’s not possible for me to advise you as to Cary Ray—only yourself can answer that question. I’ve grown to like and respect him very thoroughly, and if you could be to him what he needs in the way of a sheet anchor, it would help him more than anything in the world to steer a straight course.”
Fanny lifted a tear-wet face. “Would you advise me to marry him—without—loving him?”