“Miss Affleck—if I had only imagined that it was you! How glad I am to meet you once more! How glad Mrs. Chance will be to hear from you,” he said, taking her hand.
“But I wish to see her, Mr. Northcott—I must see her,” said Fan; and the curate at once offered to conduct her to her friend's home at Mile End.
Leaving the office, they took a cab and set out for their destination; but during the drive Fan had little chance of hearing any details concerning her friend's life; for what with the noise of the streets and the rattling of the cab, it was scarcely possible to hear a word; and whenever there came a quieter interval the curate wished to hear how Fan had passed her time, and why she had been addressed as Miss Eden.
At length they got to their journey's end, the cab, for some reason, being dismissed at some distance from the house they had come to visit. It was one in a row of small, mean-looking tenements containing two floors each, and facing other houses of the same description on the opposite side of the narrow macadamised road, which, with the loose stones and other rubbish in it, presented a dirty, ill-kept appearance. At the tenth or eleventh house in the row Mr. Northcott stopped and knocked lightly at the low front door, warped and blistered by the sun which poured its intolerable heat full upon it.
A woman opened the door and greeted the curate with a smile; then casting a surprised look at his companion, stood aside to let them pass into the narrow, dark, stuffy hallway. “He'll be sleeping just now,” said the woman, pointing up the stairs. “You can just go quietly up. She'll be there by herself doing of her writing.”
“We must go up softly then,” he said, turning to Fan. “Poor Chance is very ill, and sleeps principally in the daytime. That's why I got rid of the cab some distance from the house.”
He led the way up the narrow creaking stairs to a door on the first landing standing partly open; before it hung a wet chintz curtain, preventing their seeing into the room. Her conductor tapped lightly on the doorframe, and presently the wet curtain was moved aside by Constance, who greeted her visitor with a glad smile while giving him her hand, but the darkness of the small landing, which had no light from above, prevented her from seeing Fan for some moments.
“Harold—at last!” she said, her hand still resting in his. “I have waited two days for you; but I was resolved not to send the manuscript till you had read it.” Then she caught sight of Fan, standing a little behind him, and started back, a look of the greatest astonishment coming into her face.
“I have brought you an old friend, Constance,” said the curate, stepping aside.
“Fan—my darling Fan!” she exclaimed, but still in a subdued voice, and in a moment the two friends were locked in a long and close embrace.