What remained of the other was hardly more than a rare accelerated
heart-beat at a chord of music like the memory of a lost happiness, or
at the sea shimmering with morning. He never spoke of it now, not even
to Fanny; although it was possible that he might be doing her
understanding an injustice. Fanny, generally, was a woman in whom the
best of sense triumphed; Fanny was practical. It was she who saw that
the furnace pipes were inspected, the chimney flues cleaned before
winter; and who had the tomato frames properly laid away in the stable.
Problems of drainage, of controversies with the neighbors, were
instinctively brought to her, and she met and disposed of them with an
unfailing vigorous good judgment.

A remarkable companion, he told himself; he had been a fortunate man.
She was at once conventional and an individual: Fanny never, for
example, wore the underclothes of colored crepe de chines, the
elaborate trifles, Lee saw in the shop windows, nightgowns of sheer
exposure and candy-like ribbons; hers were always of fine white
cambric, scalloped, perhaps, or with chaste embroidery, but nothing
more. Neither did she use perfumes of any sort, there was no array of
ornamental bottles on her dressing-table, no sachet among her
handkerchiefs, her cambric was not laid in scented flannel. Her
dressing, a little severe, perhaps--she liked tailored suits with crisp
linen waists and blue serge with no more than a touch of color--was
otherwise faultless in choice and order; and, it might be that she was
wholly wise: Fanny was thin and, for a woman, tall, with square erectly
held shoulders. Her face was thin, too, almost bony, and that
magnified, emphasized, the open bright blueness of her eyes; all her
spirit, her integrity and beauty, were gathered in them; her hair was
pale and quite scanty.