If, as Fanny suspected, Diane had loved Overton, she might be unable to reconcile herself to a man who must inevitably recall a dead lover. On the other hand, this might also be Faunce’s strongest appeal—the fact that he was Overton’s chosen comrade, his closest friend, and the man who had last seen him alive.
The two girls were fairly intimate, but the younger had never dared to encroach on the quiet reserve with which the elder screened her inmost thoughts; and she could draw no positive conclusions from the vague glimpses that Diane’s rare moments of deep emotion gave her. Those moments indicated a strong but hidden feeling which might, at any moment, find an outlet in some fresh channel; and what could be more likely than the awakening of a new and living love? The probability of this termination of the affair chilled Fanny’s joy in her hero’s frequent reappearances in the quiet neighborhood of Mapleton.
“He would never come here at all,” she reasoned shrewdly, “if he wasn’t in love with somebody. He isn’t in love with me—that’s certain—so it must be Diane!”
This conclusion, which seemed to overlook all the other charming girls in the suburb, was less self-centered than it appeared. Fanny knew that Faunce had practically ignored the rest of the world, and had concentrated his attentions upon the Herford house, when an occasional invitation did not divert him to the seminary. But those occasional moments when either an actual invitation, or the courtesy of a visit after one, brought him into the Prices’ dingy drawing-room were always fraught with a tremor of excitement for Fanny, not unpleasantly mingled with the refined tortures of hope deferred.
It was just about that agreeable hour which is devoted to drinking a sociable cup of afternoon tea that she actually saw Faunce coming up the broad driveway which led from the seminary gates to the dean’s modest Queen Anne cottage. She had thought him in Washington, and his sudden appearance, pale and tall and graceful, on his way to her own door, sent a thrill to her heart.
For a moment she leaned forward, with both hands on the sill of the bay window, and watched his unconscious approach. She was quite composed when he entered the room, a few moments later, and found her rearranging her little tea-table with deft and graceful hands, while a sudden shaft of afternoon sunshine touched the little fair curls that clustered about her small, pink ears and nestled on the white nape of her neck.
She was very glad to see him. Her large blue eyes would have told him so, if he had not been so preoccupied; but it was not Fanny of whom he was thinking. He dropped into a comfortable chair beside her tea-table, accepted a cup of her tea, and began at once to talk about Diane. The irony of this almost made the girl smile; but she controlled herself, and turned a sympathetic face toward him, glad that her back was to the light, and that he seemed more occupied with staring absently at the fire on the hearth than in looking at her.
“I just heard that the Herfords might go to Florida this winter,” he observed, balancing his cup in a way that would have wrung Mrs. Price’s housewifely heart with anxiety for her best rug.
“I suppose Dr. Gerry told you?”
He nodded.