“Do you mean he never speaks my name?” and there were red spots in Fanny’s eyes and redder ones on her cheeks.
“No, he never speaks your name,” was Annie’s reply; and Fanny continued, “And the house on The Plateau,—built for me. What has he done with that?”
“Kept it,” Annie replied, while the red spots left Fanny’s eyes and cheeks and there was an exultant ring in her voice as she said, “Then he has not forgotten me. Oh, Annie, it has always been a comfort to believe that, bad as I am, Jack still loved me. It has kept me from many things I might have done. Col. Errington does not know how much of my loyalty to him he owes to my faith in Jack. But for that I might have defied him and been the veriest flirt in Europe. There were chances enough. I had only to look at a man to bring him to me. But I seldom looked,—partly to keep at peace with my husband, but more for Jack. Do you think he will come to-morrow?”
Annie hardly thought he would, or she should have heard from him to that effect.
“I feel that he will,” Fanny said with conviction. “I hope he will. To see him again,—to hear his voice, and know he didn’t hate me would send me back a better and happier woman to my cage, every bar of which is golden, but they hurt me just the same when I beat my wings against them.”
Annie did not reply. She couldn’t say that she hoped Jack would come. She had hoped so when the day loomed before her long and lonely, but now it was different, and the sight of Fanny might bring back the olden love and leave her stranded just as the goal she longed for was within her grasp.
It was late that night before the sisters went to their rooms, and later still before Annie could sleep. Fanny slept soundly,—“like a top,” she said next morning, when she went down to the tempting breakfast Phyllis had prepared.
“You looks pearter and more like Miss Fanny,” the old negress said, as she bustled around the table, while Annie, too, noticed the change.
There was color in Fanny’s cheeks and her eyes shone like stars, as she went around the house, changing things a little, and wherever she went leaving a more artistic finish than she found. Annie questioned her with regard to Paul and Carl, and then spoke of the French woman, asking if Fanny saw her.
“I saw her in London two years ago,—not in Paris,” Fanny said. “She was in Passy with her husband, but I heard of her from Paul and Sam. By the way, Carl never did a better thing than when he took that Yankee with him. He’s a curiosity to the foreigners, but faithful as the sun. He doesn’t like Madame Felix. He says she’s a sham and neglects her husband shamefully,—that the old man is dying, and that if he does she’ll ‘set her cap for Carl.’ That was the way he put it. But she’ll not succeed. She is not a lady, and though Carl may like to talk with her, as he does with every handsome woman, he’ll never go further than that.”