Her heart leaped up when she saw Stacy bowing over Selina’s hand. How handsome he was! how elegant! how easy and polished were his manners, and how gracefully he made his bow! He made every other man in the room look dowdy and clumsy. He was top-of-the-trees—the Real Thing—and from amongst all the fashionable beauties who must surely have cast out lures to him he had chosen her—little Fanny Wendover, who hadn’t even made her come-out! She felt a rush of pride in him, and wondered how she could have hesitated for a moment to go away with him.
Yet when, presently, he made his way to her side, and tried to draw her apart, she would not allow it, saying in an urgent undervoice: “No, no, not here! not now!”
“But my darling—!” he expostulated caressingly.
She was terribly nervous, fancying that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on her; a stab of pain shot through her head; and suddenly she was shaken by a wave of irritation, and whispered quite fiercely: “Don’t!”
He looked to be a good deal taken-aback. “But, Fanny, I must talk to you!”
“Not now!” she repeated. “I can’t—All these people—! Oh, pray don’t tease me! I have such a headache!”
The smile faded from his lips. He said: “I see what it is: your courage has failed you, or your love is not as strong as I believed.”
“No, no, I promise it isn’t so! Only we cannot talk here! Surely you must perceive the danger?”
“Then where?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” She saw the frown gathering on his brow, and said hurriedly: “Tomorrow—in the Gardens! At—at two o’clock! Aunt Selina will be resting on her bed, and Abby always visits old Mrs Nibley on Fridays. I’ll contrive to join you there without Grimston’s knowing. No more now: Abby is looking at us!”
She turned away on the words. The stabs of pain in her head were increasing, making her feel sick, and almost blinding her. A couple of uncertain steps brought her into collision with someone. She stammered: “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see!”
Her hand was caught, and held in a sustaining grasp; Oliver Grayshott’s voice sounded above her head. “Fanny, what it is? You are ill!”
“Oh, it’s you!” she said, clinging gratefully to his hand. “I’m not ill. It is only that my head aches so dreadfully! I shall be better directly.”
“Yes, but not in this squeeze,” he said. “You must go to bed at once!”
“Oh, no, how can I? It would break up the party, and create a horrid fuss!”
“No, it won’t,” he said calmly. “No one will notice it, if you slip out of the room. I think you have a migraine,and I know, because I’ve had ‘em myself, that there’s only one thing for it, and that’s to he down on your bed. Shall I fetch Lavinia to go with you?”
“No, pray don’t! It isn’t as bad as that! Nurse will know what to do for me. Only don’t say anything to frighten my aunts!”
“Of course not,” he replied.
“Thank you,” she sighed. “I’m very much obliged to you!”
He watched her go unobtrusively out of the room, and then made his way to where his mother was seated, talking to Canon Pinfold. He soon found an opportunity to tell her that Fanny had retired with a headache, and was anxious that her aunts should not be alarmed. She said reassuringly that she would convey the news to Abby, who would be neither alarmed nor even surprised. “ She told me, when I said I thought Fanny not looking quite the thing, that she was pretty sure she had the headache only the silly child wouldn’t own to it.”
In point of fact, Abby had observed Fanny’s departure. She said: “Yes, I saw her go, and I was excessively grateful to Oliver for persuading her to do so. What a kind young man he is! I shall take a peep at her when I go upstairs to bed, but I need never be in a worry about her when Grimston has her in charge! I expect she will be quite restored by tomorrow.”
She was mistaken. While she was still sipping a cup of chocolate on the following morning, she received a visit from Mrs Grimston, who came to request her, ominously, to take a look at Miss Fanny as soon as might be convenient.
“It’s no more than I expected, miss,” said Mrs Grimston, with the peculiar satisfaction of the devoted retainer who has detected incipient illness in one of her nurslings. “‘Yes,’ I said to myself, when she came up to me last night, ‘there’s more to this than a headache. If I know anything about it,’ I said, ‘what you’ve got, poor lamb, is the influenza!’ Which she has, Miss Abby.” She took the empty cup from Abby, and added: “ And, if I was you, ma’am, I would send the footboy to fetch the doctor to her, because she’s in a high fever, and there’s no saying but what she may throw out a rash presently, though the measles it can’t be!”
“No, of course it can’t!” said Abby, throwing back the bedclothes. “I don’t doubt it’s nothing more than influenza, just as you say!”
“Is it’s not the scarlet fever,” said Mrs Grimston, depressing optimism. She held up Abby’s dressing-gown for her. “For I shouldn’t be doing my duty, Miss Abby, if I didn’t tell you that she’s been complaining for the past hour and more that she has a sore throat!
“Very likely,” Abby returned. “So did I, when I was laid up for a sennight with the influenza, last year!”
Balked of her wish to allay anxiety by her superior knowledge and commonsense, Mrs Grimston threw in a doubler. “Yes, Miss Abby, and if it is the influenza, it’s to be hoped Miss Selina hasn’t taken it from her!”
“Oh, Grimston, you—you wretch!” Abby exclaimed ruefully. “If she has, we shall be in the suds! Well! all my dependence is upon you!”
Mollified by this tribute, Mrs Grimston relented, and said, as she accompanied Abby to the sickroom: “And so I should hope, ma’am! They say that there’s a lot of this influenza going about, so I daresay Miss Fanny hasn’t taken anything worse. But you know what she is, Miss Abby, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll send for the doctor!”
Abby did indeed know what Miss Fanny was, and she gave a ready consent to the footboy’s being sent off immediately on this errand. Fanny, though rarely ill, was a bad patient. If any seasonal ailment, or epidemic disease, attacked her, it invariably did so with unprecedented violence. None of her school-friends had been as full of the measles as she had been; none had whooped more distressingly; or had been more tormented by the mumps; so it came as no surprise to Abby, upon entering a room redolent with the fumes of burning pastilles, to find her in a high fever, and complaining in a miserable wail that she was hot, uncomfortable, aching in every limb, and hardly able to lift her eyelids.
“Poor Fanny!” Abby said softly, lifting the folded handkerchief from her brow, and soaking it afresh with vinegar. “There! is that better? Don’t cry, my pet! Dr Rowton is coming to see you, and he will soon make you more comfortable.”