“Please don't think anything of it, Mrs. Travers. I feel quite well now—perhaps it was the heat.”
“It was hot, but it never seems like dinner unless we have the gas lighted and draw the curtains.”
“I suppose I must have seemed very stupid to—the gentleman who took me in,” remarked Fan. “Can you tell me something about him, Mrs. Travers? Is he a friend of yours and Mr. Travers?”
“Are you really interested in him, Miss Eden?” said the other, with a disconcerting smile.
The girl's face flushed painfully. After a little reflection she said:
“I was so silent at table, hardly answering a word when he spoke—perhaps he thought me very strange and shy.” She paused, blushing again at her own disingenuousness. “I must have felt nervous, or frightened, at something in him. Do you know him well—is he a bad man, Mrs. Travers?”
“My dear child, what a shocking thing to say—and of a gentleman you have scarcely spoken to! You shall hear his whole biography, since you are so curious about him. We have known him a long time: he is a nephew of an old friend of ours—Mr. George Horton, a stockbroker, very wealthy. Captain Horton had a small fortune left to him, but he ran through with it, and so—had to leave the army. He was a sporting man, and had the misfortune to lose; that, I think, is the worst that can be said of him. About two years ago he went to his uncle and begged to be taken on in the office; he was sick of an idle life, he said. His uncle did not believe that he would do any good in the City, but consented to give him a trial. Since then he has been as much absorbed in the business as if he had been in it all his life. His uncle thinks him wonderfully clever, and I dare say will make him a partner in the firm before very long. And now, my dear Miss Eden, you must get rid of that fancy about him, because it is wrong; and later in the evening when you hear him sing—you are so fond of music!—you will like him as much as we do.”
After this little discourse the good woman took her station at a table in the garden to pour out the coffee.
But there was a tumult in the girl's heart, a strange feeling she could not analyse. It was not fear—she feared him no longer; nor hate, since, as she had said, her happiness had taken from her the power to hate anyone; yet it was strong as these, importunate, and its object was clear to her soul, but how to give it expression she knew not.
The hum of conversation suddenly grew loud in the dining-room; the gentlemen had finished their wine, if not their discussion; they had risen, and were about to join the ladies in the garden. The impulse in her was so strong that it was an anguish, and she could not resist it. Coming to the side of her hostess, she spoke hesitatingly: