Fanny flushed all over her face and neck. Only a little child or a very young girl can blush like that--a blush that passes almost as quickly as it comes, and is, perhaps, of all emotional expressions the most natural and charming. "I did have a letter," she faltered, "and I have tried to answer it, am going to answer it--I am so sorry----" "I don't see the necessity of being sorry," said the elder lady. "One does not answer a letter of that description flippantly and by the next post; my brother will quite understand and appreciate the cause of delay." "Oh, but it's not the _delay_ I'm sorry for, it's the--it's the having to say that--I can't say what he wants me to say." Miss Hancock raised her eyebrows. Miss Lambert's English was enough to raise a grammarian from the grave, but it was not at the English that Miss Hancock evinced surprise. James Hancock was not as old to his sister as he appeared to the rest of the world, though she knew his age to a day and had quoted it as an argument against his marriage; she did not appreciate the fact that he looked every day of his age, and even perhaps a few days over. It is a pathetic and sometimes beautiful--and sometimes ugly--fact that we are blind to much in the people we live with and grow up with. Joan sees Darby very much as she saw him thirty years ago, and to Miss Hancock her younger brother was her younger brother; and her younger brother, to a woman, is never old. Besides being in the "prime of life," James was clever; besides being clever, he was rich, very rich. What more could a girl want? "You mean," said Patience, "that you cannot accept his proposition." "N--no--that is, I'd _like_ to, but I can't." "If you 'liked' to do it, I do not see what is to prevent you." "Oh, it's not that sort of liking. I mean I'd like to like him, I do like him, but not in the way he wants." "It is no affair of mine," said Miss Hancock, "not in the least, but I would urge you not to be too hasty in your reply. Think over it, weigh the matter judicially before you decide upon what, after all, is the most important decision a young girl is ever called upon to make." "I hate myself," broke out Fanny, who had been listening with bent head, and finger tracing the pattern on the cloth of the table beside her. "I hate myself. People are always doing me kindnesses and I am always acting like a beast, so it seems to me, but how can I help it?" lifting her head suddenly with a bright smile. "If I were to marry them all, I'd have about fifty husbands, now--_more!_--so what am I to do?" Miss Hancock sniffed; she had never been in the same position herself, so could give no advice from experience. The question rather irritated her, and a smart lecture rose to her lips on the impropriety and immodesty of girls allowing people of the other sex to "care for them," etc., etc., but the lecture did not pass her lips.