She grew suddenly wistful as she eyed her friend:
“You have changed a lot since you were married, Fan; all the girls think so. Sometimes I feel almost afraid of you. Is it—do you—?”
Fanny’s unaccountable resentment melted before a sudden rush of sympathy and understanding. She drew Ellen’s blushing face close to her own in the sweetness of caresses:
“I’m so glad for you, dear, so glad!”
“And you’ll tell Jim?” begged Ellen, after a silence full of thrills. “I should hate to have him suppose—”
“He doesn’t, Ellen,” Jim’s sister assured her, out of a secret fund of knowledge to which she would never have confessed. “Jim always understood you far better than I did. And he likes you, too, better than any girl in Brookville.”
“Except Lydia,” amended Ellen.
“Oh, of course, except Lydia.”
Chapter XXIX.
There was a warm, flower-scented breeze stirring the heavy foliage drenched with the silver rain of moonlight, and the shrilling of innumerable small voices of the night. It all belonged; yet neither the man nor the woman noticed anything except each other; nor heard anything save the words the other uttered.