"I think you know, Fanny, why I am here, don't you?" I asked.
"It is tolerably obvious, Mr. Ticehurst," she answered rather gravely, I thought.
"Yes, I suppose it is; but first I want to be sure whether you were right about what you told me on the morning we left San Francisco."
I was silent, and looked at her. She seemed a trifle distressed.
"Well, Tom, I thought that I was," she answered at length; "and I still think I am—and yet I don't know. You see, Elsie is a strange girl, and never confides in anyone since dear mother died, and she would never confess anything to me. Still, I have eyes in my head, and ears too. But since you have been with us she has been harder and colder than I ever saw her in all my life, and she has said enough to make me think that there is something that I know nothing about which makes her so. You know, I joked her about you yesterday, and she got so angry all of a sudden, like pouring kerosene on a fire, and she said you were a coward. When I asked her why, she turned white and wouldn't answer. Then I said of course you must be a coward if she said so, but I didn't think she had any right to say it or think it when you had saved all our lives by your coolness and courage. And then, you know, I got angry and cried, because I like you very much, just as much as I do my brother on the station at home. And I said she was a cruel beast, and all kinds of horrid things, until I couldn't think of anything but making faces at her, just as I did when I was a child. And we are having a quarrel now, and it is all about you—you ought to be proud." And Fanny looked up half laughing and half crying, for she dearly loved Elsie, as I knew.
"Well, my dear little sister Fanny," I said, "for you shall be my sister one day, there is something that makes her think ill of me, but it is not my fault, as far as I can see. And I can't convince her of that, except by showing her that I am not the man she thinks, unless some accident puts me back into the place I once believed I held in her thoughts. But I want to speak to her, and I must do it to-day. To-morrow we shall be in Victoria, and I should not like to part with her without speaking. If I talk with her now, it will probably take some time, so I want you, if you can, to prevent anyone interrupting us."
Fanny nodded, and wiped away a tear in a quick manner, just as if it were a fly.
"Very well, I will. You know I trust you, if Elsie doesn't." And she went over to Harmer, who was in a fidget, and kept looking at me as if he was wondering what I meant by talking so confidentially to Fanny.
I found Elsie sitting by herself just forward of the funnel. She was reading, and though when I spoke she answered and put the book down in her lap, she kept looking at it in a nervous way, as if she wished I had not interrupted her; and we had been talking some minutes before she seemed to wholly forget that it was there.
I spoke without any thought of what I was going to say.