"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic—what you have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger sails at once, and will report himself to you."
"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.
And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the steps in Clarges street.
"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of Parliament, who opened the door—"Miss Meyrick, I mean."
"Yes, sir—in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a flourish.
Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.
Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.
"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then—did you?—that I cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you, sir—none at all. Can you?"
Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic. I had dreaded the rôle; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all my little stock of property-phrases—friendship of a life, esteem, etc.—of no more account than a week-old playbill.
For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene, in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.