Two years ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered
around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes
and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths
fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in
discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that
the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was
merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently the
charm had waned, for me at least; and in my confessions to Bessie
since our near intimacy it was she, not I, who had magnified it into
the shadow even of a serious thought.

"Care for her? Nonsense, Bessie! Do you want me to call her a mere
doll, a hard, waxen--no, for wax will melt--a Parian creature, such as
you may see by the dozens in Schwartz's window any day? It doesn't
gratify you, surely, to hear me say that of any woman."

And then--what possessed me?--I was so angry at myself that I took a
mental _résumé_ of all the good that could be said of Fanny
Meyrick--her generosity, her constant cheerfulness; and in somewhat
headlong fashion I expressed myself: "I won't call her a dolt and an
idiot, even to please you. I have seen her do generous things, and she
is never out of temper."

"Thanks!" said Bessie, nodding her head till the blue feather
trembled. "It is as well, as Aunt Sloman says, to keep my shortcomings
before you."

"When did Aunt Sloman say that?" I interrupted, hoping for a diversion
of the subject.