In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her. Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale, concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail, ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged. In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained. Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so. He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's was a home. Yet from that he was barred. To those that lack homes hotels are convenient. Across the way meanwhile Mrs. Price was very busy. In looming on the veranda it had seemed to her that her daughter and that man were occupied with certain ceremonies. Regarding them she attacked the girl at once. "You have not taken him?" she began by way of reconnaissance. That afternoon Fanny had visited ruins. There were others more personal that she was viewing then, the ruins of fair things not dead but destroyed. "Answer me," Mrs. Price commanded. The girl started. But she had been far away--in that lovely land where dreams come true and then, it may be, turn into nightmares. Through the dreams hand in hand with Loftus she had been strolling. Now she must put them all away. "Answer me," Mrs. Price repeated. "I am afraid so." Into a misty and deserted parlor of the Inn Mrs. Price pulled the girl and there let fire. "Afraid! You ought to be! What will your father say?" The father here projected was a gentleman who resided abroad and who seldom opened his mouth except to put something in it. "And Fred!" Fred was Fanny's brother, a young chap whose opinions were of no value to anyone, himself included. "And everybody!" Everybody was the upper current of social life. "And Sylvia!" The earlier shots had not inflicted any visible damage, but this must have told. "I shall have to write to her," Fanny with unusual meekness replied. "Yes, do. Do by all means. Tell her you have taken her leavings. And why? Merciful heavens, why? If you were as staid and stiff as she I could understand. But a girl like you, with your tastes, your extravagances, a girl with a national reputation for beauty, to go and accept twenty-five thousand a year is--is--sinful, that's what it is. Your own father has that, and on it we are out at elbows. It is just about enough for you to dress on. Oh, Fanny, Fanny!" Hysterically the old lady waved her hands. "Oh, Fanny, I have so prayed that you would make a brilliant match. I have scrimped and saved that you might, and you go and take a blond beast of a pauper. It is too cruel!"