"My mother," said Fanny, "is the kindest-hearted woman in the world. We have never exactly suffered this disaster; but we are in a rank of life which causes us to be brought into contact with such among our friends and relations; and she is familiar with trouble in almost all shapes. You are a great favourite of hers; and now that she can claim a sort of acquaintance, she will be heart and soul your friend."
"It is odd," observed Ethel, "that she never mentioned you to me. Had the name of Fanny been mentioned, I should have recollected who Mrs. Derham was."
"Perhaps not," said Fanny; "it would have required a great effort of the imagination to have fancied Mrs. Derham the wife of my father. You never knew him; but Lord Lodore made you familiar with his qualities: the most shrinking susceptibility to the world's scorn, joined to the most entire abstraction from all that is vulgar; a morbid sensibility and delicate health placed him in glaring contrast with my mother. They never in the least assimilated; and her character has gained in excellence since his loss. Before she was fretted and galled by his finer feelings—now she can be good in her own way. Nothing reminds her of his exalted sentiments, except myself; and she is willing enough to forget me."
"And you do not repine?" asked her friend.
"I do not: she is happy in and with Sarah. I should spoil their notions of comfort, did I mingle with them;—they would torture and destroy me, did they interfere with me. I lost my guide, preserver, my guardian angel, when my father died. Nothing remains but the philosophy which he taught me—the disdain of low-thoughted care which he sedulously cultivated: this, joined to my cherished independence, which my disposition renders necessary to me."
"And thus you foster sorrow, and waste your life in vain regrets?"
"Pardon me! I do not waste my life," replied Fanny, with her sunny smile;—"nor am I unhappy—far otherwise. An ardent thirst for knowledge, is as the air I breathe; and the acquisition of it, is pure and unalloyed happiness. I aspire to be useful to my fellow-creatures: but that is a consideration for the future, when fortune shall smile on me; now I have but one passion; it swallows up every other; it dwells with my darling books, and is fed by the treasures of beauty and wisdom which they contain."
Ethel could not understand. Fanny continued:—"I aspire to be useful;—sometimes I think I am—once I know I was. I was my father's almoner.
"We lived in a district where there was a great deal of distress, and a great deal of oppression. We had no money to give, but I soon found that determination and earnestness will do much. It was my father's lesson, that I should never fear any thing but myself. He taught me to penetrate, to anatomize, to purify my motives; but once assured of my own integrity, to be afraid of nothing. Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world's great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on; I never hesitated to use them, when I fought any battle for the miserable and oppressed. People are so afraid to speak, it would seem as if half our fellow-creatures were born with deficient organs; like parrots they can repeat a lesson, but their voice fails them, when that alone is wanting to make the tyrant quail."
As Fanny spoke, her blue eyes brightened, and a smile irradiated her face; these were all the tokens of enthusiasm she displayed, yet her words moved Ethel strangely, and she looked on her with wonder as a superior being. Her youth gave grace to her sentiments, and were an assurance of their sincerity. She continued:—