“Have you never heard anything bad about me or mother?” she asked, and Roy answered, with so sudden a movement that one of the cushions fell to the floor.
“Bad about you, or your mother? Never. I would have thrashed any one who insinuated anything against you. What do you mean?”
“I am not Fanny Prescott,” the girl said with a sob in her voice.
“The deuce you are not! Who are you, then, if you are not your father’s daughter?” Roy asked, and Fanny replied, “I am my father’s daughter, but my father was not Judge Prescott, as I thought. I never knew it till he died last May. Mother had to tell me then on account of some business matters and it almost broke my heart, I was so fond of him and so proud of being his daughter and he was so kind to me. I held his hand when he died and kissed him and called him father and didn’t suspect the truth. I don’t think you will care for me when you know all. I have always heard the Masons were very proud.”
“And I have always heard the Tracys were very proud. Greek meeting Greek, you see,” Roy rejoined. “But go ahead. Let’s hear the story. Nothing can ever change my love for you. Who are you? Who was your father?”
“Have you ever heard of the Prospect House in Ridgefield, Mass.?” Fanny asked, and Roy answered briskly, “I guess I have. It was there father met my mother, twenty-three years ago. I had heard piles about it and the funny little landlord before I went there this last summer with father and mother. We had a fancy to drive through the country, stopping where night overtook us, and the second day we reached the Prospect House, which looks rather old fashioned beside the fine hotel which has been built on the Common. I wanted to stop there but nothing could keep father from the Prospect House, and I was glad we went there. I wish you could see the landlord, Uncle Zach they call him. He is an old man with such a fat body and short legs and round good natured face, and what do you think he called his wife?”
Fanny could not guess, and Roy continued, “Dot, and Dotty, and I’ll bet she weighs two hundred, and is nearer eighty than seventy. Think of calling her Dotty! There is love of the right sort, isn’t it? But I shall love you just as well when you weigh three hundred and are ninety, as I do now.”
His hand had gotten quite under the cushion and had one of Fanny’s.
“You hurt,” she said, as he gave it a hard squeeze. “And you must not hold it either. You don’t know at all who I am. Did they mention Mark Hilton at the Prospect House?”
“Why, yes, I think they did,” Roy said slowly, as if trying to recall something which had slipped his memory. “Father and mother and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were talking and I heard that name I am sure. When I joined them they stopped suddenly, as if they did not care to continue the conversation. Who was he, anyway? Some scamp?”