Going abroad?  Good gracious!  That was the very thing I had to tell her that morning—­that I too was ordered abroad.  An estate to be settled—­some bothering old claim that had been handed down from generation to generation, and now springing into life again by the lapsing of two lives on the other side.  But how to tell her as she looked up into my face with the half-pleading, half-imperious smile that I knew so well?  How to tell her now?

So I said nothing, but foolishly pushed the little pebbles aside with my stick, fatuously waiting for the subject to pass.  Of course my silence brought an instant criticism:  “Why, Charlie, what ails you?”

“Nothing.  And really, Bessie, what is it to us whether Fanny Meyrick go or stay?”

“I shouldn’t have thought it was anything.  But your silence, your confusion—­Charlie, you do care a little for her, after all.”

Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek.  But there were other moths fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought.  It was merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits.  Consequently the charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into the shadow even of a serious thought.

“Care for her?  Nonsense, Bessie!  Do you want me to call her a mere doll, a hard, waxen—­no, for wax will melt—­a Parian creature, such as you may see by the dozens in Schwartz’s window any day?  It doesn’t gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman.”

And then—­what possessed me?—­I was so angry at myself that I took a mental resume of all the good that could be said of Fanny Meyrick—­her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat headlong fashion I expressed myself:  “I won’t call her a dolt and an idiot, even to please you.  I have seen her do generous things, and she is never out of temper.”

“Thanks!” said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather trembled.  “It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings before you.”

“When did Aunt Sloman say that?” I interrupted, hoping for a diversion of the subject.

“This morning only.  I was late at breakfast.  You know, Charlie, I was so tired with that long horseback ride, and of course everything waited.  Dear aunty never will begin until I come down, but sits beside the urn like the forlornest of martyrs, and reads last night’s papers over and over again.”

“Well?  And was she sorry that she had not invited me to wait with her?”

“Yes,” said Bessie.  “She said all sorts of things, and,” flushing slightly, “that it was a pity you shouldn’t know beforehand what you were to expect.”