“I think Mr. Cranley would prefer that you secure him, Miss Delahoussaye. He was all admiration while you retained the room.”

“You are a sly creature, Miss Austen! But do call me Fanny,” she said, slipping her arm through mine. I had not the slightest inclination to proceed to further intimacy in such a manner, and so did not offer her my Christian name. “I have been longing for the chance to walk with you alone, for I am in a sad turmoil of mind, and the wisdom of such an one as yourself — so much my senior in age and experience — must be a source of comfort.”

So much her senior, indeed! The eight years’ difference in our ages is hardly the stuff of a generation; but I could not expect Miss Delahoussaye to refrain from malice, when an opportunity for abuse presented itself.

“Such advice as I can give, I will gladly offer; although I must consider our acquaintance as so slight, as to recommend some other party to your interest.”

“Our acquaintance slight! I declare! It was not five minutes after your arrival at Scargrave that I felt assured you would be the salvation of my visit to that dreary place, and perhaps the means of securing that felicity — but I am too precipitate. I impose upon your kindness. I had better explain the nature of my distress.”

“To be sure,” I said, somewhat bewildered.

“You cannot have been long in the company of Lieutenant Hearst without remarking his extraordinary ability to please,” she began, with a sidelong glance. “I am sure you cannot.”

“He is a charming fellow.” And so this is how she intended to broach my indiscretion of New Year's Eve. I had almost succeeded in forgetting it.

“Charming! He is all that is attentive and engaging. And such modesty! Such diffidence! He never comprehends the effect his openness and amiability have on the ladies of his acquaintance. I know that many an one has been persuaded to think too much of his notice, his conversation, his little habits of attention, before this.” She stopped to caress a blooming plant with one finger. “I am very much afraid that it has caused many to regret their having hoped for so much, upon discovering he intended too little. La, an orchid in January! I declare, an orchid is pleasanter than anything in the world.”

And so, I thought, taking the import of her first words, I am warned off. Even a second son of a wastrel is too good for a Miss Austen, without fortune or connexion to recommend her. I could not but think a primary object of Fanny's confidence was to apprise me of my danger in encouraging Lieutenant Hearst's attentions; by suggesting his fickleness, she hoped to wound me, and thus win his attention for herself. Though she lacks the appearance of jealousy, her character suggests she cannot be immune to its bite. But how amusing that she should feel that emotion towards me, when I had despaired of my power before one of her beauty and fortune!

“As a woman so much older than yourself, I must own I have encountered men as charming as the Lieutenant elsewhere,” I said carefully. “Amiable as he may be, I have seen his equal before. Your more sheltered life to date must excuse you.”

At this, she coloured prettily. “I may express too great a partiality for the Lieutenant,” she said. “How else can one who is promised to him be expected to regard him, but as the epitome of all that is good and admirable in a man?” “Promised!” I cried, attempting in vain to recover my wits. “I had not an idea of it! And your mother approves?”

“Oh, Lord! Mamma knows nothing about it,” Fanny said composedly. “The match is unlikely to meet with favour from her, any more than it would have won Isobel's consent — and you know, Isobel's father was my guardian, and at his death the charge passed to her, until I should marry or reach the age of twenty-five. My Uncle John Collins had long acted in lieu of my father, and had strongly advised my mother to find me a husband befitting my fortune — I am possessed of no less than thirty thousand pounds. Me so far persuaded Mamma of the sum's significance, and warned her so repeatedly against fortune hunters, that she will not have me even dance with any man who can claim less than five or ten thousand a year, much less a second son.”

“You do not share her scruple?”

“Where love exists, how can fortune matter?”

How, indeed! Fortune, or lack of it, has been the main impediment to every trifling attachment of my life; it was certainly the means of dividing me from my first love, and my truest — Tom Lefroy.[41] Young as we both were, I do not believe we lacked anything conducive to our mutual affection and happiness, but fortune. But I forbore to give way to self-pity, and agreed with Miss Delahoussaye that her comfortable means must allow her to bestow her affections where her heart chose.

“And you have been promised to the Lieutenant how long?”

“These three weeks.”

Three weeks. His attentions to me must, therefore, have been as nothing; I had been deceived by flattery yet again. It is not to be borne!

“I declare,” Miss Delahoussaye said expansively, “but it is a change! I have been wild about Tom for ages, but he was ever of a mind to abuse me unmercifully; and there was a time last summer when I almost thought him promised to a Miss King, and gave him up for lost. But apparently that went off, and when he came to us at Scargrave, there was never a man more attentive! I must believe it the effect of my purple silk; it is a cunning gown, and might almost make my eyes the same shade.”

I made some answer, equal to her speech in its lack of sense, and she continued almost without pause.

“Mamma thought nothing of his presence at the house, it being taken up with mourning; and he would look glum as all whenever she appeared, and pretend to dance attendance on you, only to brighten immediately once she was out of sight, and profess himself violently in love! A capital scheme, I declare! Only now there is the trial, and Tom and I must live apart, and barely speak; not a ball are we to have, or any amusement—”

“Miss Delahoussaye,” I interrupted, “I fail to see where my advice is wanted.”

“But you must tell me what to do!”

“In what manner may I be of assistance?”

“Tom — Lieutenant Hearst — was to go to Isobel the night the Earl died. We had determined that she should be told, whether she should give her consent or no, and that we should be married after Christmas if we must go to Gretna Green to do it.” Her words were unusually vehement.

I confess to a quickening of my pulse. “And did Lieutenant Hearst obtain his interview?”

“I cannot make out whether he did, but it cannot signify now. Isobel is past all consent, and cannot plague us any longer. But it is Mamma I think of; and I cannot believe she will see reason until the marriage is made.”

“I cannot stand in lieu of either, Miss Delahoussaye, if it is consent you seek.”

“But here is the point, Miss Austen. Tom will have us marry as soon as possible — he is wild to get me, I own. And now we are in mourning, and the trial is soon to happen — I declare I am almost distracted! For how am I to marry when the whole world is set against it?”

I confessed that even my age and experience had failed to teach me ways to circumvent such convention; but I ventured the opinion that a marriage within six weeks of the trial might not be considered ill, if it were conducted quietly and without undue pomp. At this Fanny seemed reassured, and professed her unshakable intent of waiting for Lieutenant Hearst until they could hir away to Gretna Green.

Having had time to absorb this news, along with its implicit warning against such things as kisses in the moonlight, I was possessed of a new thought.