Fanny had wheeled her sofa to the fire, and had just buried her face in a velvet cushion to weep as long and as much as she wished. Mr. Evans, in his concern for her, had followed Norah, and stood outside the door.
“Tell him not to trouble himself to come up. I shall do very well as soon as I have slept.”
“If you had asked me to take the trouble to stay down stairs, I might have thought of it; but seeing I am here, it is no trouble to come; and you are so bright and cosy, suppose you let the girl bring the waiter up here and make my tea for me.”
Mr. Evans was quite sure that something beside sickness had happened to Fanny, and he intended to be confessor or doctor, as the case might be.
“Norah, bring Mr. Evans’s supper to my room,” said Fanny, more cheerfully than she would have thought possible a few minutes before. And she passed into her bed-room and bathed her face and her eyes, and arranged her hair, and came back to make tea for Mr. Evans very much improved. But she could not talk—she had fairly lost her tongue.
Mr. Evans seemed more unconstrained and more fully himself than since his unfortunate offer of himself to Fanny.
“Fanny,” said he, after the tea things were taken away, “I would like to ask you what is the matter, if I thought you would like to tell me. It is no common headache that is tormenting you; I would sooner guess it is a heartache.”
“And what if it is a heartache?” said Fanny.
“You mean to ask what I should have to do with the diseases of your heart. I tell you, Fanny, I am not as bad as you may think, or so big a fool either. For instance, though I love you a great deal better than Heaven, and would sooner have you for my wife than an angel, yet knowing that you can’t love an old codger like me, I want to see you happy with the man of your choice, and I tell you now, for the cure of your headache, or heartache, that you have my consent to marry Mr. Wilson.”
Fanny burst into so violent and uncontrolled a fit of weeping, that Mr. Evans was alarmed and puzzled.