“Fanny.”
This telegram was brought to Annie one morning just after Jack had left her for Richmond. For a moment everything around her was chaos, as she sat with the message in her hands trying to collect her thoughts, which turned into a strange channel. Col. Errington was dead. Fanny was free, and loved Jack as well, or better, than she ever did. And Jack? What of him? Now that the barrier was removed, would his first great love revive, kindled again into flame by his pity for Fanny, and the wiles she would surely practice upon him, given the chance?
“No, oh no!” Annie said at last. “It is unjust to Jack and a wrong to Fanny.”
Then as she read again the “Come at once,” she began to plan for her journey, the first she had ever taken alone. It was too late to go that day, and she must take the early train the next morning and wait in Richmond as Fanny had done.
“I shall telegraph Jack to meet me there,” she thought, wondering how he would look when she told him Col. Errington was dead.
The little jealous stab would intrude in spite of her, and when, the next morning, summoned by the telegram he had received from her the day before, Jack met her at the station, she told him the news in a breath.
“Oh, Jack, Col. Errington is dead. Fanny is a widow and has sent for me,” she gasped, and then looked up at him, much as a criminal in the dock looks at the judge when receiving sentence.
But what she feared she might see was not there. Jack was startled, but not greatly surprised, as he recalled what he had heard of the Colonel’s condition in Washington. The words “Fanny is a widow” made no other impression than to present her to his mind as sorrowful and alone. He knew nothing of her married life, but supposed she had been comparatively happy, inasmuch as she had her heart’s desire,—money. Naturally, she was very desolate now in the first stages of her grief, and in his great kind heart he was sorry for her, but more sorry for the timid girl clinging so closely to him as she asked many questions about her journey,—must she change cars and did he think they would run off the track, and what should she do when she got there if there was no one to meet her. He told her that she did not change cars,—that the train would not run off the track, and there would be some one to meet her if, as she said, she had telegraphed that she was coming. Then he made her sit down while he went for her ticket, and when he came back to her he held up two, instead of one.
“Jack,” she exclaimed, “are you going with me?”
“Yes, little woman. I thought it would please you,” he replied, taking her arm to lead her to the train.