tily, though
tenderly, entreated her to tell him which, and what he could do.

"Oh, no, no!" she exclaimed, starting up, and removing her handkerchief,
so that he saw her usually pale cheeks were crimson--"Oh, no," she
cried, with panting breath and heaving chest. "It is all well with them
as yet. But--but--it's your brother."

He was at no loss now as to what his brother could have done, but he
stood confounded, with a sense of personal share in the offence, and his
first words were--"I am very sorry. I never thought of this."

"No, indeed," she exclaimed, "who could? It was too preposterous to be
dreamt of by any one. At his age, too, one would have thought he might
have known better."

A secret sense of amusement crossed the Colonel, as he recollected that
the disparity between Fanny Curtis and Sir Stephen Temple had been far
greater than that between Lady Temple and Lord Keith, but the little
gentle lady was just at present more like a fury than he had thought
possible, evidently regarding what had just passed as an insult to her
husband and an attack on the freedom of all her sons. In answer to a few
sympathising words on the haste of his brother's proceeding, she burst
out again with indignation almost amusing in one so soft--"Haste! Yes!
I did think that people would have had some respect for dear, dear Sir
Stephen," and her gush of tears came with more of grief and less of
violence, as if she for the first time felt herself unprotected by her
husband's name.

"I am very much concerned," he repeated, feeling sympathy safer than
reasoning. "If I could have guessed his intentions, I would have tried
to spare you this; at least the suddenness of it. I could not have
guessed at such presumptuous expectations on so short an acquaintance."

"He did not expect me to answer at once," said Fanny. "He said he only
meant to let me know his hopes in coming here. And, oh, that's the worst
of it! He won't believe me, though I said more to him than I thought
I could have said to anybody! I told him," said Fanny, with her hands
clasped over her knee to still her trembling, "that I cared for my
dear, dear husband, and always shall--always--and then he talked about
waiting, just as if anybody could leave off loving one's husband! And
then when he wanted me to consider about my children, why then I told
him"--and her voice grew passionate again--"the more I considered, the
worse it would be for him, as if I would have my boys