“All right, Fanny; you needn’t be afraid of my doing anything awkward or sudden. I’ll go to her room pretty soon, after she is quieted down, and have a good, calm, old, fatherly conversation with her.”
The colonel was spared this errand; for Kitty had left some of her things on Fanny’s table, and now came back for them with a lamp in her hand. Her averted face showed the marks of weeping; the corners of her firm-set lips were downward bent, as if some resolutions which she had taken were very painful. This the anxious Fanny saw; and she made a gesture to the colonel which any woman would have understood to enjoin silence, or, at least, the utmost caution and tenderness of speech. The colonel summoned his finesse and said, cheerily, “Well, Kitty, what’s Boston been saying to you?”
Mrs. Ellison fell back upon her sofa as if shot, and placed her hands over her face.
Kitty seemed not to hear her cousin. Having gathered up her things, she bent an unmoved face and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided from the room without a word.
“Well, upon my soul,” cried the colonel, “this is a pleasant, nightmarist, sleep-walking, Lady-Macbethish, little transaction. Confound it, Fanny! this comes of your wanting me to manœuvre. If you’d let me come straight at the subject, like a man——”
“Please, Richard, don’t say anything more now,” pleaded Mrs. Ellison in a broken voice. “You can’t help it, I know; and I must do the best I can, under the circumstances. Do go away for a little while, darling! Oh dear!”
William Dean Howells.
PUCK.
OH, it was Puck! I saw him yesternight