Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently
awake to notice it.

"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was
talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was
most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he
found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under
her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.

"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes.
"He walked home with me."

"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us,"
Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought
it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of
something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your
nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she
added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman
doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it
won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he
is too much in love for that."

She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all
night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she
had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had
time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take
the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her
arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret,
would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which
no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay;
he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how
stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?

For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just
as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be
content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because
she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those
days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would
have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have
wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with Dick. It
seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater
freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial
fact remained