The clock struck five and Fanny, roused from her reverie by the sudden sound, glanced out of the window.  At the gate she saw Elliot.  He stood there, gazing at the house as if uncertain whether to enter or not.  Fanny put up a tremulous hand to her hair, which was pinned fast in its accustomed crisp coils; then she glanced down at her blue gown....  Yes; he was coming in!  The bell hanging over the passage door jangled shrilly.  Fanny stood stock-still in the middle of the floor, staring at it.  There was no fire in the parlor.  She would be forced to bring him out to the kitchen.  She thought of the wide, luxuriously furnished rooms of Bolton house and unconsciously her face hardened.  She might pretend she did not hear the bell.  She might allow him to go away, thinking none of the family were at home.  She pictured him, standing there on the doorstep facing the closed door; and a perverse spirit held her silent, while the clock ticked resoundingly.  Then all at once with a smothered cry she hurried through the hall, letting the door fall to behind her with a loud slam.

He was waiting patiently on the doorstep, as she had pictured him; and before a single word had passed between them she knew that the stone had been rolled away.  His eyes met hers, not indeed with the old look, but with another, incomprehensible, yet wonderfully soul-satisfying.

“I wanted to tell you about it, before it came to you from the outside,” he said, when they had settled themselves in the warm, silent kitchen.

His words startled Fanny.  Was he going to tell her of his approaching marriage to Lydia?  Her color faded, and a look of almost piteous resignation drooped the corners of her mouth.  She strove to collect her scattered wits, to frame words of congratulation with which to meet the dreaded avowal.

He appeared in no hurry to begin; but bent forward, his eyes upon her changing face.

“Perhaps you know, already,” he reflected.  “She may have told your brother.”

“Are you speaking of Miss Orr?”

Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.

“Yes,” he said slowly.  “But I suppose one should give her her rightful name, from now on.”

“I—­I hadn’t heard,” said Fanny, feeling her hard-won courage slipping from her.  “Jim didn’t tell me.  But of course I am not—­surprised.”

He evidently experienced something of the emotion she had just denied.

“No one seemed to have guessed it,” he said.  “But now everything is plain.  Poor girl!”

He fell into a fit of musing, which he finally broke to say: 

“I thought you would go to see her.  She sorely needs friends.”

“She has—­you,” said Fanny in a smothered voice.

For the life of her she could not withhold that one lightning flash out of her enveloping cloud.

He disclaimed her words with a swift gesture.

“I’m not worthy to claim her friendship, nor yours,” he said humbly; “but I hope you—­sometime you may be able to forgive me, Fanny.”