Chapter 38 - Page 2

compelled to say something, and made some
commonplace remarks about the weather--its excessive heat and dryness; it
had not been so hot for years. "At noon in the City to-day," he said,
"the thermometer marked eighty-nine degrees in the shade."

Fan's monosyllabic replies were scarcely audible; she was very pale, and
kept her eyes religiously fixed on the table before her. At length she
ventured to glance at him, and could not help noticing, in spite of her
distress, that he seemed as ill at ease as herself. He crumbled his bread
to powder on the cloth, and when he raised his glass to drink, which he
did often enough to fill up the time, his hand shook so as almost to
spill his wine. Seeing him so nervous, she began to experience a kind of
pity for him--some such complex feeling as a very humane person might
have for a reptile he has been taught to loathe and fear when seeing it
in pain--and at length surprised him by asking if he lived in Kingston.
He replied that he usually spent the summer months there for the sake of
the boating; and then, as if afraid that they would drop into silence
again, he put the same question to her. Fan replied that she was only
staying for a few days with her friends the Travers. A few vapid remarks
about Kingston and the river was all they could find to say after that,
and it was an immense relief when the ladies at length rose and left the
room.

Mrs. Travers led the way through the drawing-room to the garden, but when
all her guests, except Fan, who came last, had passed out, she came back
to speak alone to the girl.

"I am afraid you are not feeling well, my dear," she said. "You look as
pale as a ghost, and I noticed that you scarcely ate anything at dinner,
and were very silent.

"Please don't think anything of it, Mrs. Travers. I feel quite well now--
perhaps it was the heat."

"It _was_ hot, but it never seems like dinner unless we have the gas
lighted and draw the curtains."

"I suppose I must have seemed very stupid to--the gentleman who took me
in," remarked Fan. "Can you tell me something about him, Mrs. Travers? Is
he a friend of yours and Mr. Travers?"

"Are you really interested in him, Miss Eden?" said the other, with a
disconcerting smile.

The girl's face flushed painfully. After a little reflection she said:

"I was so silent at table, hardly answering a word when he spoke--perhaps
he thought me very strange and shy." She paused, blushing again at her
own disingenuousness. "I must have felt nervous, or frightened, at
something in him. Do you know him well--is he a bad man, Mrs. Travers?"

"My dear child,