Not that she ever betrayed her lowness of spirit. If she could be brought to speak of her trials, which was seldom, and only to a few trusted friends, she said that she was by far more fortunate than many soldiers’ widows, because she had been supported throughout by her brother, of whose affection and generosity she could not speak without emotion. He was an East India merchant—but, as the highest and most antiquated sticklers in Bath acknowledged, a most gentlemanly person—and a bachelor, commonly said to be rolling in riches. Not only had he coaxed and bullied his sister into accepting an allowance from him which enabled her to establish herself with modest elegance in Edgar Buildings, but he had claimed the right to maintain his surviving nephew at Rugby, and his only niece at Miss Trimble’s select seminary in Bath. It was generally supposed that Oliver Grayshott was destined to be his heir, and although there were those who thought it rather too bad of Mr Balking to have sent his poor sister’s sole remaining son to India, it was almost universally agreed that she would have been culpably in the wrong had she refused to be parted from him.

She had not done so, and now, as several persons had foreseen from the outset, he was returning to her, if not at death’s door, at the best in a state of total collapse.

Abby, blessed with a cheerful mind, took a more optimistic view of Oliver’s case, but she did realize the anxiety which Mrs Grayshott must be feeling, and was inclined to think that the consequent agitation of her nerves might well have led her to exaggerate the strength of Fanny’s infatuation.

The following three days did nothing to promote such a comfortable notion. There could be no doubt that Fanny, dazzled by the attentions of a London beau, had plunged headlong into her first love-affair, and was ripe for any outrageous folly. Wholly unpractised in the art of dissimulation, her spasmodic attempts to appear unconcerned betrayed her youth, and might, under different circumstances, have amused Abby. But it was not long before Abby found much more to dismay than to amuse her. She was herself impulsive, often impatient of convention, and, in her girlhood, rebellious, but she had been reared far more strictly than Fanny, and it came as a disagreeable shock to her when she discovered that Fanny watched for the postman every day, and, at the first glimpse of his scarlet coat and cockaded hat, slipped out of the room to intercept the delivery of letters to the house. Never, at her most rebellious, had Abby dreamed of engaging in clandestine correspondence! Such conduct, if it were known, must sink Fanny below reproach.

Every feeling was offended; and had she not been tolerably certain, from Fanny’s downcast looks, that no letter from Mr Calverleigh had reached her she thought she must have abandoned caution, and taken the girl roundly to task. At first inclined to give Mr Calverleigh credit for propriety, a little quiet reflection made her realize that if marriage was indeed his object he would scarcely commit an act of such folly as to write letters to Fanny which would be more than likely to fall into the hands of her aunts. His aim must be to propitiate Fanny’s guardians; and in his dealings with Selina he had shown that he knew it. Abby thought that he had succeeded all too well. Selina had been very much shocked by the disclosures made to her, but she hoped, in a nebulous way, that perhaps, after all, they would be found to be untrue; and she was moved to what Abby considered an excess of sensibility by the spectacle of her niece running to look eagerly out of the window every time a vehicle drew up outside the house. “Poor, poor child!” she mourned. “It is so very affecting! I do not know how you can remain unmoved! I had not thought you so—so unfeeling,Abby!”

“I’m not unmoved,” responded Abby crossly. “I am most deeply moved—with a strong desire to give Fanny the finest trimming of her life! I’d do it, too, if I didn’t fear that it would encourage her in the belief that she is a persecuted heroine!”

In this noble resolve to abstain from gratifying her desire she was strengthened by Fanny’s reception of the only piece of advice she permitted herself to give that love-lorn damsel: that she should not wear her heart on her sleeve. Chin up, eyes flashing, flying her colours in her cheeks, Fanny said: “I am not ashamed of loving Stacy! Why should I dissemble?”

Quite a number of pungent retorts rose to Abby’s tongue, and it said much for her self-control that she uttered none of them. Intuition had made Fanny suspect already that her favourite aunt was ranged on the side of Stacy Calverleigh’s enemies; she was slightly on the defensive, not yet hostile, but ready to show hackle. No useful purpose would be served by coming to cuffs with her, Abby thought, and therefore held her peace.

Chapter III

Mr Calverleigh did not reappear in Bath that week, nor did he write to Fanny. Abby began to entertain the hope that a mountain had indeed been made out of a molehill, and that he had merely been amusing himself with a flirtation; and could have borne with tolerable equanimity Fanny’s wilting demeanour had it not been disclosed to her by the amiable Lady Weaverham that her ladyship had received a very proper letter from him, excusing himself from dining with her on the following Wednesday, but stating that he would certainly be in Bath again by the end of the next week, when he would call in Lower Camden Place to proffer his apologies in person.

This piece of news applied a damper to Abby’s optimism. Her spirits were further depressed by the announcement by Selina, in the thread of a voice, that she had contracted a putrid sore throat, accompanied by fever, a severe headache, and a colicky disorder. She had not closed her eyes all night, and could only hope that these distressing symptom did not presage an illness which, if not immediately fatal, would leave her to drag out the rest of her life between her bed and a sofa. Abby did not share these gloomy apprehensions, but she lost no time in sending for the latest practitioner to enjoy Selina’s favour. She begged him not to encourage the sufferer to think herself hovering on the brink of the grave. He promised to reassure Selina, and very nearly lost his most lucrative patient by telling her, in hearty accents, that nothing worse had befallen her than what he was tactless enough to term a touch of influenza.Before he had time to prophesy a speedy recovery he realized that he had fallen into error, and, with a dexterity which (in spite of herself) Abby was obliged to acknowledge, retrieved his position by saying that, although he would ordinarily consider the illness trifling, when it attacked persons of such frail constitution as Miss Wendover the greatest care must be exercised to ensure that no serious consequences should attend it. He recommended her to remain in bed; promised to send her within the hour a saline draught; approved of such remedies as extract of malt for a possible cough; goat’s whey, to guard against consumption; laudanum drops in case of insomnia; and a diet of mutton-broth, tapioca-jelly, and barley-water, all of which she had herself suggested; and left the sickroom tolerably certain that he had restored her wavering faith in his skill. He told Abby, apologetically, that neither these remedies nor the depressing diet would do any harm, and with this she had to be content, resigning herself to the inevitable, and deriving what consolation she could from the reflection that for some days at least there was no danger that while she danced attendance on her sitter Mr Calverleigh would be strengthening his hold on Fanny’s youthful affections.

The eldest Miss Wendover showed every sign of enjoying a protracted illness, for although the fever soon abated she maintained a ticklish cough, and, after an attack of heart-burn, threw out so many dark hints to her entourage about cardiac nerves that Fanny became quite alarmed, and asked Abby if poor Aunt Selina’s heart had indeed been affected.

“No, dear: not at all!” responded Abby cheerfully.

“But—Abby, I have sometimes wondered if—Abby, does my aunt like to be ill?”

“Yes, certainly she does. Why not? She has very little to divert her, after all! It makes her the centre of attention, too, and how unkind it would be to grudge it to her! The melancholy truth is, my love, that single females of her age are almost compelled to adopt dangerous diseases, if they wish to be objects of interest. Not only spinsters, either! You must surely have observed how many matrons, whose children are all married, and who are so comfortably situated that they have really nothing very much to do, develop the most interesting disorders!”

Her eyes as round as saucers, Fanny asked: “Do you mean that my aunt will lie on a sofa for the rest of her life?”

“No, no!” said Abby. “Sooner or later something will happen to give her thoughts a new direction, and you will be surprised to see how quickly she will recover!”

In the event, this happened rather sooner than could have been expected. Shortly after noon one day, Abby entered her room to find her seated bolt upright on the day-bed, to which, support-ported by her maid, she had tottered an hour before, eagerly perusing the crossed sheet of a letter just delivered by the post.

“Oh, dearest, whatever do you think?” she exclaimed, in accents startlingly unlike those with which she had greeted her sister earlier in the day. “The Leavenings are coming to spend the winter in Bath! Good God, they may have arrived already! Mrs Leavening writes that they mean to put up at the York House while they look about them for lodgings, and depend upon us to advise them, for they were never in Bath before, you know! I wonder if the lodgings the Thursleys hired in Westgate Building—but they are in the lower part of the town, of course, and though it is a broad street—and anything here,or in Pulteney Street, or Laura Place, might be above their price—not that Mrs Leavening tells what is the figure they have in mind, but I shouldn’t suppose Mr Leavening’s fortune to be more than genteel, would you?”