Blind Love

Lord Harry's conduct was the first subject that presented itself when

the conversation was resumed.

My lady mentioned that she had noticed how he looked, and how he left

the room, when she had spoken in praise of Mr. Mountjoy. She had

pressed him to explain himself---and she had made a discovery which

proved to be the bitterest disappointment of her life. Her husband

suspected her! Her husband was jealous of her! It was too cruel; it was

an insult beyond endurance, an insult to Mr. Mountjoy as well as to

herself. If that best and dearest of good friends was to be forbidden

the house, if he was to go away and never to see her or speak to her

again, of one thing she was determined--he should not leave her without

a kind word of farewell; he should hear how truly she valued him; yes,

and how she admired and felt for him! Would Fanny not do the same

thing, in her place? And Fanny had remembered the time when she might

have done it for such a man as Mr. Mountjoy. "Mind you stay indoors

this evening, sir," the maid continued, looking and speaking so

excitedly that Hugh hardly knew her again. "My mistress is coming to

see you, and I shall come with her."

Such an act of imprudence was incredible. "You must be out of your

senses!" Mountjoy exclaimed.

"I'm out of myself sir, if that's what you mean," Fanny answered. "I do

so enjoy treating a man in that way! The master's going out to

dinner--he'll know nothing about it--and," cried the cool cold woman of

other times, "he richly deserves it."

Hugh reasoned and remonstrated, and failed to produce the slightest

effect.

His next effort was to write a few lines to Lady Harry, entreating her

to remember that a jealous man is sometimes capable of acts of the

meanest duplicity, and that she might be watched. When he gave the note

to Fanny to deliver, she informed him respectfully that he had better

not trust her. A person sometimes meant to do right (she reminded him),

and sometimes ended in doing wrong. Rather than disappoint her

mistress, she was quite capable of tearing up the letter, on her way

home, and saying nothing about it. Hugh tried a threat next: "Your

mistress will not find me, if she comes here; I shall go out to-night."

The impenetrable maid looked at him with a pitying smile, and answered: "Not you!"

It was a humiliating reflection--but Fanny Mere understood him better

than he understood himself.