FANNY AT LOUDWATER HOUSE.
Miss Sudlow and Phil made a point of writing to each other twice a week. With the ordinary run of their correspondence we have nothing to do; it concerned themselves only and was sacred to their own eyes. But there came a day, after Fanny had been about three weeks at Loudwater House, when she addressed to her lover a long epistle, which, as having an important bearing on the events of which this narrative is a record, is here transcribed in so far as it is needful to do so.
"In accordance with a promise which I made you some time ago, I now proceed to jot down a few impressions and opinions anent the new--and strange--little world and its inmates into the midst of which I was so suddenly transplanted three weeks ago.
"First of all, let me gratefully record the fact that everybody is very kind to me, that my comfort is studied in a score of different ways, and that I am treated more like one of the family than a dependent. My pupil is a dear little fellow, quick at learning and of an affectionate disposition, and I am really becoming quite attached to him.
"I confess that for the first few days I stood somewhat in awe of Mrs. Melray the elder. You know what a stately, almost imperious, old dame she is, with a manner which at first strikes one as being reserved almost to the point of frigidity; but by degrees one discovers that it is nothing more than manner, and that under it beats a warm woman's heart, in which there is no lack of generous sympathies.
"That, at least, is how I construe her character, and I don't think that I am far out in my diagnosis. But it may be that I have been exceptionally fortunate, in view of the fact that two or three days ago Mr. Melray said to me, with one of his dry smiles: 'I find that my mother has conceived quite a liking for you, Miss Sudlow. It is not often that she takes to anyone as she has taken to you.' Of course it was very gratifying to me to be told this, especially as I had in no way laid myself out to conciliate the old lady.
"Of Mrs. Melray the younger what shall I say? I confess that in many respects she is an enigma to me. I was scarcely prepared to find her so attractive as she really is. Beautiful she is not, and it would be a misnomer to apply the term to her, but her face is one which I should think that seven out of every ten men would find singularly fascinating, in addition to which there is a strange but indefinable charm about her personality, which even I, one of her own sex, find it impossible wholly to resist. She is still curiously girlish, not merely in appearance, but in many of her ways, and when I first set eyes on her in her widow's weeds, it caused me the oddest sensation imaginable; indeed, I would not like to assert that a moisture, rare with me, did not dim my eyes as her tiny hand lingered for a moment or two in mine.
"To connect, even in thought, those guileless blue eyes, that milk-white brow, and that expression at once so candid and innocent, with crime of any kind, much more with a crime so mysterious and terrible as the murder of Mr. Melray, seems to me as if one were to draw up an indictment in opposition to Nature's own instincts. And yet there have been occasions when, taking her unawares, I have caught her scrutinising me with a certain indescribable something in her gaze which has not merely puzzled me, but rendered me vaguely uneasy. At such times it has seemed to me that, instead of its being I who was studying and trying to read her, it was she who was submitting me to a like process.
"I remember your giving it as your opinion that Mr. Robert Melray entertained no very friendly feeling towards his brother's widow, and the longer I stay here the more inclined I am to think you were right. But then, Mr. Melray is one of those dry, reserved, undemonstrative men, as to whose likes or dislikes it is somewhat rash to formulate too positive an opinion. Being the gentleman he is, it goes without saying that he treats her with uniform courtesy and consideration; but underlying it all there is a certain hardness and frigidity which, no doubt, are partly natural to him, but in part only as it seems to me.
"But, if one may be allowed to entertain some doubt as to the quality of the feeling with which Mr. Melray regards the youthful widow, there can be no room for doubt as far as his mother is concerned. That Mrs. Melray the younger is distinctly antipathetic to Mrs. Melray the elder unfortunately admits of no dispute. Not that they see much of each other, save at luncheon and dinner, and perhaps for an hour afterwards in the drawing-room. The dowager always breakfasts in her own apartments and spends the major part of her time there with her companion, a middle-aged spinster, Miss Armishaw by name, and an amiable nonentity. More than once young Mrs. Melray has spoken to me, in her prettily pathetic, girlish way, of the evident dislike in which the elder woman holds her: 'I have done all I can in the effort to conciliate her, but in vain,' she says; 'so now I have given up the attempt as useless. I have been told that there are some women so constituted that they always dislike their daughters-in-law unless they themselves have had a hand in choosing them; and yet that seems a hard thing to believe.'