She saw Nelson’s eye furtively on her while she answered.
“No one can dispute her beauty, sir. It exceeds the pictures of her I have seen exhibited. But, if my opinion is asked, I think they are personages who move in a very different world from the simple one to which we are accustomed.”
“They move in my world,” Nelson interrupted angrily. “And as I have raised you to that world by my successes I shall hope you will do me no discredit with my friends. Much of what you rejoice in now you owe to the Hamiltons, for without them it could not have been accomplished.”
“I hope indeed we shall both of us have cause to rejoice!” she said, strangling a sob in her throat. “You must pardon me if as yet I am a little strange to such society and such stories as Sir William Hamilton gave me of Naples.”
He turned away, then coldly: “I’m dead tired after the journey, and to-morrow will be a busy day.”
He kissed her in the great dingy bedroom and she saw him no more that night. Not only that day but the next were busy beyond all words. He must visit the Admiralty, and returned chagrined by his reception. The truth was the Palermitan stories had poisoned all authoritative sources in England, and his arrival with the Hamiltons, following on the ill-judged journey across Europe, had disgusted many. Public opinion was slowly but surely ranking itself on Fanny’s side, and she, poor bewildered woman, did not know what to do with it.
Nelson had returned all-glorious, but the air was chill after the tropical praise of the Mediterranean. Lord Spencer of the Admiralty had been his friend, but now—he came back furious and flung himself into a chair, before Fanny, who was quietly knitting.
“The Lady of the Admiralty was as cool as ice to me,” he said, with sarcasm that ill hid his annoyance. “Lady Spencer, forsooth! I care little enough for it. Let them get another admiral to fight their battles when they want one! Yet she wrote to me after the Nile a letter that almost overwhelmed me with praise. Women—women!—the most changeable frivolous creatures on all God’s earth. I know but one who never changes; whose warm candid soul is always the same. Oh, if all were like that, what a world it would be! Do you drive out with Lady Hamilton to-day?”
“Certainly, if you wish it!” she said, with her eyes on her knitting. She, who knew the stories afloat, thought their association ill-judged, but what could she say?
“Naturally I wish it, while gratitude is of any consequence, and Heaven knows that you and all the world might learn from her kind heart and accomplishments which I have never seen equalled.”