“I have not found my nature ardent,” says the lady.— “Rather, I am given to judging men coolly—and women also. I have seen Mrs. Fenton in trial and prosperity and I judge her a woman of sense and spirit. I shall always esteem her friendship, and fortunately have no dictator to say me nay.”
“Fortunately?” He raised his eyebrows a thought. “If your Ladyship says this in earnest it puts a period to all I would say.”
“And what is that?” says she, softly. “I never held an opinion so savagely but what it could be changed by argument.”
If my Lord had but guessed it, the ice was thin indeed now, and the Siren beckoning beyond, but vanity is blind whatever love may be, and he went onward with a smile of confidence very thinly veiled by a lover’s enforced humility.
“My Lady Fanny, ’tis not so long since I believed I might flatter myself that you condescended to a little pleasure in my company. Was I wrong?”
Her eyes, large and sweet, looked at him above her fan.
“Indeed, no! ’Tis very true.”
’Twas so softly said that the colour kindled in his pale face. He drew his breath somewhat quicker.
“A shadow—I scarce know what—fell between us, and by no will of mine I have not had the happiness that was once so often mine. We have been much apart the last weeks.”
“We have been much apart,” she echoed, in a voice scarce audible.