“Yes,” Fan said.
“Well,” Carl continued, “she wrote me a letter in French. She has been in Paris five years and must be perfect in the language. She was with her aunt, Madame Du Bois, who keeps a pension. She addressed me as ‘My dear Carl,’ and signed herself ‘Your devoted Julina.’ I am so poor a French scholar that I couldn’t make it all out, and got a fellow to help me, and by Jove he told of it to these girls as a joke on me, and I was hectored until I almost hated the name Julina. I didn’t answer her letter; upon my word I didn’t.”
“I know nothing about Julina and care less,” Fan replied, “but Miss Errington did write me that you were something of a flirt, and I should know that if she had not written it.”
Again Carl seemed irritated and answered warmly, “I don’t know what you mean. Can’t a fellow enjoy himself with a pretty girl who enjoys herself with him? I like them all, and the one I am with last I like the best. It is my nature. I can’t help it; but I’d burn my hands to the bone before I would wrong any girl, or knowingly deceive her. I have given no woman reason to think my attentions more than those of a friend, and if she thought so it was her own fault and because she did not understand me.”
At this moment Katy entered the room. She had heard his last words, and there was a look of surprise in her eyes for a moment; then they suddenly hardened and her manner was more like that of a Grande Duchesse than our simple-hearted Katy as she took the chair he brought her, and bending over her with his hand on her shoulder stroked her hair and said, “You look pale, are you tired?”
Leaning her head against the back of the chair Katy closed her eyes as if she were tired, but really to repress the tears which in her weak state came so easily. Months after, when Carl’s letters, at first so long and frequent, had become like angel’s visits, “short and far between,” she said to me, hesitatingly, “I thought Carl liked me just as Jack likes Fanny. He never said so, it is true, but he acted it, and I was pleased and happy. There is something about him which wins you in spite of yourself. Hypnotism, perhaps. But I am over it now. I know he does not care for me as I did for him.”
She spoke sadly, and I felt a throb of indignation against Carl, who had, unwittingly, perhaps, thrown a shadow on Katy’s life. She was young in years, but old in much which makes mature womanhood, and the attentions of a man like Carl could not fail to impress her with a deeper feeling than sisters feel for brothers. He still wrote her occasionally,—bright, chatty letters, full of protestations of affection for herself and all of us, and telling her of a life of which she knew nothing. But he didn’t come again, and he seemed at last to have passed out of our lives, into which another exciting interest had entered.
Chapter III.—Annie’s Story Continued.
THE ENGAGEMENT.
The winter succeeding father’s death was a hard one for us. Our effort to economize and still not seem to do so was a struggle, and probably did not deceive anyone. Jack understood all our needs and straits and helped us wherever he could,—not in money, but in many ways where a man’s advice and assistance are invaluable. He was now agent for a large firm which paid him well, and as he was traveling only a part of the time we saw a great deal of him, and the evenings when he was not with us seemed monotonous and long. Sometimes when the days were fine and he had leisure for it he took long walks with Fan in the woods, and when they came back I used to notice a brightness in his manner and a look in Fan’s eyes which I had not seen there before. Christmas week and the one following he was in town, negotiating a sale for his mother’s house. When he left it was early on the morning train, and that night, when Fan and I were alone in our room and she was brushing her glossy hair, she turned suddenly to me and said, “I have promised to marry Jack. Didn’t you notice that he looked more like an idiot than usual?”
I was standing by my dressing bureau with my back to her, so that she could not see the whiteness of my face as I put my hand upon my heart, where for a moment there was the sharpest pain I had ever known or ever shall again. I had expected this would come sometime and I thought I was prepared, but now that it had come, I found myself a weak, wicked woman, loving a man who was to marry my sister, and who, under no circumstances, could ever have cared for me. Rallying in a moment and laughing at her likening him to an idiot, I replied, “You forget I have not seen him since I left you with him last night in the parlor and went to bed with a headache. I suppose it was after I came up stairs.”