Greville Fane

by Henry James




Coming in to dress for dinner, I found a telegram: "Mrs. Stormer
dying; can you give us half a column for to-morrow evening? Let her
off easy, but not too easy." I was late; I was in a hurry; I had
very little time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply:
"Will do what I can." It was not till I had dressed and was rolling
away to dinner that, in the hansom, I bethought myself of the
difficulty of the condition attached. The difficulty was not of
course in letting her off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. "I
simply won't qualify it," I said to myself. I didn't admire her, but
I liked her, and I had known her so long that I almost felt heartless
in sitting down at such an hour to a feast of indifference. I must
have seemed abstracted, for the early years of my acquaintance with
her came back to me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down,
hut the lady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I
tried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books "too vile." I had
never thought them very good, but I should let her off easier than
that.

I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask about
her. The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west
district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension
that I should be too late was justified in a fuller sense than I had
attached to it--I had only feared that the house would be shut up.