told me there wasn't any talk.”
“I didn't think there was much, then,” Fanny protested. “I didn't know how much there was.”
“What!”
“People don't come and tell such things to a person's family, you know. You don't suppose anybody was going to say to George Amberson that his sister was getting herself talked about, do you? Or that they were going to say much to me?”
“You told me,” said George, fiercely, “that mother never saw him except when she was chaperoning you.”
“They weren't much alone together, then,” Fanny returned. “Hardly ever, before Wilbur died. But you don't suppose that stops people from talking, do you? Your father never went anywhere, and people saw Eugene with her everywhere she went—and though I was with them people just thought”—she choked—“they just thought I didn't count! 'Only old Fanny Minafer,' I suppose they'd say! Besides, everybody knew that he'd been engaged to her—”
“What's that?” George cried.
“Everybody knows it. Don't you remember your grandfather speaking of it at the Sunday dinner one night?”
“He didn't say they were engaged or—”
“Well, they were! Everybody knows it; and she broke it off on account of that serenade when Eugene didn't know what he was doing. He drank when he was a young man, and she wouldn't stand it, but everybody in this town knows that Isabel has never really cared for any other man in her life! Poor Wilbur! He was the only soul alive that didn't know it!”
Nightmare had descended upon the unfortunate George; he leaned back against the foot-board of his bed, gazing wildly at his aunt. “I believe I'm going crazy,” he said. “You mean when you told me there wasn't any talk, you told me a falsehood?”
“No!” Fanny gasped.
“You did!”
“I tell you I didn't know how much talk there was, and it wouldn't have amounted to much if Wilbur had lived.” And Fanny completed this with a fatal admission: “I didn't want you to interfere.”
George overlooked the admission; his mind was not now occupied with analysis. “What do you mean,” he asked, “when you say that if father had lived, the talk wouldn't have amounted to anything?”
“Things might have been—they might have been different.”
“You mean Morgan might have married you?”
Fanny gulped. “No. Because I don't know that I'd have accepted him.” She had ceased to weep, and now she sat up stiffly. “I certainly didn't care enough about him to marry him; I wouldn't have let myself care that much until he showed that he wished to marry me. I'm not that sort of person!” The poor lady paid her vanity this piteous little tribute. “What I mean is, if Wilbur hadn't died, people wouldn't have had it proved before their very eyes that what they'd been talking about was true!”
“You say—you say that people believe—” George shuddered, then forced himself to continue, in a sick voice: “They believe my mother is—is in love with that man?”
“Of course!”
“And because he comes here—and they see her with him driving—and all that—they think they were right when they said she was in—in love with him before—before my father died?”
She looked at him gravely with her eyes now dry between their reddened lids. “Why, George,” she said, gently, “don't you know that's what they say? You must know that everybody in town thinks they're going to be married very soon.”
George uttered an incoherent cry; and sections of him appeared to writhe. He was upon the verge of actual nausea.
“You know it!” Fanny cried, getting up. “You don't think I'd have spoken of it to you unless I was sure you knew it?” Her voice was wholly genuine, as it had been throughout the wretched interview: Fanny's sincerity was unquestionable. “George, I wouldn't have told you, if you didn't know. What other reason could you have for treating Eugene as you did, or for refusing to speak to them like that a while ago in the yard? Somebody must have told you?”
“Who told you?” he said.
“What?”
“Who told you there was talk? Where is this talk? Where does it come from? Who does it?”
“Why, I suppose pretty much everybody,” she said. “I know it must be pretty general.”
“Who said so?”
“What?”
George stepped close to her. “You say people don't speak to a person of gossip about that person's family. Well, how did you hear it, then? How did you get hold of it? Answer me!”
Fanny looked thoughtful. “Well, of course nobody not one's most intimate friends would speak to them about such things, and then only in the kindest, most considerate way.”
“Who's spoken of it to you in any way at all?” George demanded.
“Why—” Fanny hesitated.
“You answer me!”
“I hardly think it would be fair to give names.”
“Look here,” said George. “One of your most intimate friends is that mother of Charlie Johnson's, for instance. Has she ever mentioned this to you? You say everybody is talking. Is she one?”
“Oh, she may have intimated—”
“I'm asking you: Has she ever spoken of it to you?”
“She's a very kind, discreet woman, George; but she may have intimated—”
George had a sudden intuition, as there flickered into his mind the picture of a street-crossing and two absorbed ladies almost run down by a fast horse. “You and she have been talking about it to-day!” he cried. “You were talking about it with her not two hours ago. Do you deny it?”
“I—”
“Do you deny it?”
“No!”
“All right,” said George. “That's enough!”
She caught at his arm as he turned away. “What are you going to do, George?”
“I'll not talk about it, now,” he said heavily. “I think you've done a good deal for one day, Aunt Fanny!”
And Fanny, seeing the passion in his face, began to be alarmed. She tried to retain possession of the black velvet sleeve which her fingers had clutched, and he suffered her to do so, but used this leverage to urge her to the door. “George, you know I'm sorry for you, whether you care or not,” she whimpered. “I never in the world would have spoken of it, if I hadn't thought you knew all about it. I wouldn't have—”
But
