“I know it—­it is really dreadful,” returned Fanny Newt.  “People do say the most annoying and horrid things.  But this time, I am sure, there can be nothing very vexatious.”  And Miss Newt fanned herself with persistent complacency, as if she were resolved to prolong the pleasure which Mrs. Dinks must undoubtedly have in the conversation.

Hitherto it had been the policy of that lady to demur and insinuate, and declare how strange it was, and how gossipy people were, and finally to retreat from a direct reply under cover of a pretty shower of ohs! and ahs! and indeeds! and that policy had been uniformly successful.  Everybody said, “Of course Alfred Dinks and his cousin are engaged, and Mrs. Dinks likes to have it alluded to—­although there are reasons why it must be not openly acknowledged.”  So Field-marshal Mrs. Dinks outgeneraled Everybody.  But the gallant young private, Miss Fanny Newt, was resolved to win her epaulets.

As Mrs. Dinks made no reply, and assumed the appearance of a lady who, for her own private and inscrutable reasons, had concluded to forego the prerogative of speech for evermore, while she fanned herself calmly, and regarded Fanny with a kind of truculent calmness that seemed to say, “What are you going to do about that last triumphant move of mine?” Fanny proceeded in a strain of continuous sweetness that fairly rivaled the smoothness of the neck, and the eyes, and the arms of Mrs. Bleecker Van Kraut: 

“I suppose there can be nothing very disagreeable to Miss Wayne’s friends in knowing that she is engaged to Mr. Alfred Dinks?”

Alas!  Mrs. Dinks, who knew Hope, knew that the time for dexterous subterfuges and misleadings had passed.  She resolved that people, when they discovered what they inevitably soon must discover, should not suppose that she had been deceived.  So, looking straight into Fanny Newt’s eyes without flinching—­and somehow it was not a look of profound affection—­she said,

“I was not aware of any such engagement.”

“Indeed!” replied the undaunted Fanny, “I have heard that love is blind, but I did not know that it was true of maternal love.  Mr. Dinks’s mother is not his confidante, then, I presume?”

The bad passions of Mr. Dinks’s mother’s heart were like the heathen, and furiously raged together at this remark.  She continued the fanning, and said, with a sickly smile,

“Miss Newt, you can contradict from me the report of any such engagement.”

That was enough.  Fanny was mistress of the position.  If Mrs. Dinks were willing to say that, it was because she was persuaded that it never would be true.  She had evidently discovered something.  How much had she discovered?  That was the next step.

As these reflections flashed through the mind of Miss Fanny Newt, and her cold black eye shone with a stony glitter, she was conscious that the time for some decisive action upon her part had arrived.  To be or not to be Mrs. Alfred Dinks was now the question; and even as she thought of it she felt what must be done.  She did not depreciate the ability of Mrs. Dinks, and she feared her influence upon Alfred.  Poor Mr. Dinks! he was at that moment smoking a cigar upon the forward deck of the Chancellor Livingston steamer, that plied between New York and Providence.  Mr. Bowdoin Beacon sat by his side.