Then I turned to her and saw that her face was nearly as white as the letter over which her eyes were traveling with lightning speed.
“Fanny, Fanny,” I exclaimed; “what is it? what has happened? Is father ill, or dead?”
“Neither,” she answered, in a voice very unlike herself. “Neither ill nor dead, as you mean it; but dead to us. He is to be married to-night at eight o’clock.”
For a moment everything turned black around me, and I might have fallen from my chair if Phyllis, who was standing near me, had not put her hand upon me as she said, “Surmised it all ‘long. I done tol’ you so.”
Neither Fan nor I paid any attention to her then; we were too intent upon the letter, which Fan at last read aloud and which ran thus:
“Boston, April —, 1866.
“My Dear Daughters:
“I am very glad that I can at last tell you something definite with regard to the business which brought me to Boston, and which will soon be happily completed. You remember the Mrs. Haverleigh whom I attended last fall through a dangerous illness? Well, the admiration I conceived for her then has since ripened into what, if I were a younger man, I should call love.”
“Love!” Fan repeated, scornfully. “Love! and he almost sixty years old. If he were not my father, I’d call him a fool!”
“No fool so big as an old fool!” came explosively from Phyllis, whose turban seemed bristling with rage as she spoke out exactly what was in my mind.