“Is she so very pretty?” Annie asked, and Fanny replied,
“Pretty is not the term to apply to her, any more than petite. She is stout,—weighing at least a hundred and seventy; but her figure and dress are so perfect that you forget her size. She has large black eyes and yellowish hair,—a peculiar combination, but Frenchy,—fine teeth, high color, which she owes as much to powder and paint as to nature, but it’s well put on, and deceives the men. There is something about her which attracts them, too. She even won upon George,—or tried to. Me she ignored and avoided. She reminded me of somebody, I could not tell whom, and Sam said the same. He will keep watch of her, and Katy will be in the field by and by. From her pure lovely face Carl could never look the second time at Madame.”
Then they talked of Katy and Miss Errington, neither of whom Fanny saw in Europe,—and of the people in Lovering,—and the morning passed and the two o’clock dinner was served, and Jack did not come, and Fanny’s spirits began to fall a little. When dinner was over she said to Annie, “You told me you had the key to the house. Give it to me, please. I am going there.”
Annie gave it to her and she was soon on her way to The Plateau, taking a circuitous path through the woods so as to avoid the villagers. It was dark when she came back, and the lamp was lighted in the dining-room, where Annie was sitting with the tea-table beside her. Fanny’s eyes were very red as she knelt before the fire and held her cold hands to the blaze.
“I have cried at last,” she said, with quivering lips and choking voice, and that was all the reference she made then to that visit to the house where God alone saw the anguish of her soul as she went through the silent rooms, with a feeling that it was her own grave over which she was walking.
It was in the upper room she lingered longest,—“Our Room;”—Annie’s description had been concise and she knew the chair where Jack had sat when he read her letter, and she saw him there in fancy and heard his pitiful cry, “Fanny isn’t married;—my Fanny! No-o, Annie, no-o.”
She went to the bay window and sat down by the table where she was to have waited and watched for Jack as he came up the hill, while from every part of the room came the wailing cry, “No-o, Annie, no-o.”
The windows,—the doors,—the ceiling,—the walls,—all; caught it up and sent it back to her, until it seemed as if her brain were on fire.
“I must cry or die,” she said, stretching out her hands and fanning herself with them for more air.
Then rising up she threw herself upon what was to have been her bridal bed and lay there a crushed, remorseful woman, hiding her face among the pillows whose softness had a kind of healing in their touch, bringing tears at last,—blessed tears,—which fell like rivers and cooled her burning fever. She had wanted a thunder-storm, and she had it. The tear cistern, empty so long, was filled and refilled as often as it overflowed. The dainty pillow-shams with her initial upon them were crumpled and soiled and lay at last in a heap under her head, while the little girl in the medallion looked smilingly down upon her, mocking her misery. When her tears were spent and the choking in her throat was gone she rose up, and laying her hands caressingly upon every article in the room, as if in farewell, went down stairs and out into the darkness, locking the door behind her and saying as she did so, “Good-bye, home which was to have been mine. I was not worthy of you. Good-bye.”