“Perhaps you know, already,” he reflected. “She may have told your brother.”
“Are you speaking of Miss Orr?”
Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But I suppose one should give her her rightful name, from now on.”
“I—I hadn’t heard,” said Fanny, feeling her hard-won courage slipping from her. “Jim didn’t tell me. But of course I am not—surprised.”
He evidently experienced something of the emotion she had just denied.
“No one seemed to have guessed it,” he said. “But now everything is plain. Poor girl!”
He fell into a fit of musing, which he finally broke to say:
“I thought you would go to see her. She sorely needs friends.”
“She has—you,” said Fanny in a smothered voice.