I cast a glance up into the leafy branches, and seated myself opposite to her.
"Fanny, Fanny. Have you heard?"
"'Heard,' she says!" It was her turn to play the parrot. "What am I here for, but to hear more? But never mind; that's all over. Has mother——"
"'All over,' Fanny!" I interrupted her. "All over? But, the letters?"
"What letters?" She stared at me, and added, looking away, "Oh, mine?" She gave out the word with a long, inexhaustible sigh. "That was all right. He did not hide, he burned.... Neither to nor from; not even to his mother. Every paper destroyed. I envy her feelings! He just gave up, went out, Exit. I envy that, too."
"Not even to you, Fanny? Not a word even to you?"
The figure before me crouched a little closer together. "They said," was her evasive reply, "that there is melancholia in the family."
I think the word frightened me even more than its meaning. "Melancholia," I repeated the melodious syllables. "Oh, Fanny!"
"Listen, Midgetina," her voice broke out coldly. "I can guess easily enough what's saving up for me when I come home—which won't be yet a while, I can assure you. I can guess, too, what your friends, Lady Pollacke and Co., are saying about me. Let them rave. That can't be helped. I shall bear it, and try to grin. Maybe there would be worse still, if worse were known. But your worse I won't have, not even from you. I was not his keeper. I did not play him false. I deny it. Could I prevent him—caring for me? Was he man enough to come openly? Did he say to his mother, 'Take her or leave her, I mean to have her'—as I would have done? No, he blew hot and cold. He temporized; he—he was a coward. Oh, this everlasting dog-fight between body and mind! Ages before you ever crept upon the scene he pestered and pestered me—until I have almost retched at the sound of church bells. What was it, I ask you, but sheer dread of what the man might go and do that kept me shilly-shallying? And what's more, Miss Wren, who told me to throw the stone? Pff, it sickens me, this paltering world. I can't and won't see things but with my reason. My reason, I tell you. What else is a schoolma'am for? Did he want me for my sake? Who begged and begged that his beautiful love should be kept secret? There was once a philosopher called Plato, my dear. He poisoned Man's soul."
Flesh and spirit, Fanny must have been very tired. Her voice fluttered on like a ragged flag.