“But what can I do if he comes to me?” asked Fanny, almost whimpering.

“He has said that he will not, and we do not doubt his word either.”

“That I am sure you need not.  Whatever anybody may say, Mr. Saul is as much a gentleman as though he had the best living in the diocese.  No one ever knew him break his word—­not a hair’s breadth—­or do—­anything else—­that he ought—­not to do.”  And Fanny, as she pronounced this rather strong eulogium, began to sob.  Mrs. Clavering felt that Fanny was headstrong, and almost ill-natured, in speaking in this tone of her lover, after the manner in which she had been treated; but there could be no use in discussing Mr. Saul’s virtues, and therefore she let the matter drop.  “If you will take my advice,” she said, “you will go about your occupations just as usual.  You’ll soon recover your spirits in that way.”

“I don’t want to recover my spirits,” said Fanny; “but if you wish it, I’ll go on with the schools.”

It was quite manifest now that Fanny intended to play the role of a broken-hearted young lady, and to regard the absent Mr. Saul with passionate devotion.  That this should be so Mrs. Clavering felt to be the more cruel, because no such tendencies had been shown before the paternal sentence against Mr. Saul had been passed.  Fanny, in telling her own tale, had begun by declaring that any such an engagement was an impossibility.  She had not asked permission to have Mr. Saul for a lover.  She had given no hint that she even hoped for such permission.  But now when that was done which she herself had almost dictated, she took upon herself to live as though she were ill-used as badly as a heroine in a castle among the Apennines!  And in this way she would really become deeply in love with Mr. Saul—­thinking of all which Mrs. Clavering almost regretted that the edict of banishment had gone forth.  It would, perhaps, have been better to have left Mr. Saul to go about the parish, and to have laughed Fanny out of her fancy.  But it was too late now for that, and Mrs. Clavering said nothing further on the subject to any one.

On the day following his visit to the farm-house, Harry Clavering was unwell—­too unwell to go back to London; and on the next day he was ill in bed.  Then it was that he got his mother to write to Mrs. Burton; and then also he told his mother a part of his troubles.  When the letter was written he was very anxious to see it, and was desirous that it should be specially worded, and so written as to make Mrs. Burton certain that he was in truth too ill to come to London, though not ill enough to create alarm.  “Why not simply let me say that you are kept here for a day or two?” asked Mrs. Clavering.

“Because I promised that I would be in Onslow Terrace to-morrow, and she must not think that I would stay away if I could avoid it.”

Then Mrs. Clavering closed the letter and directed it.  When she had done that, and put on it the postage-stamp, she asked in a voice that was intended to be indifferent, whether Florence was in London; and, hearing that she was so, expressed her surprise that the letter should not be written to Florence.