“At once!” Well, there’s only a few days’ delay, at most.  Perhaps it’s young Bunker.  He can take the case and end it:  anybody can end it now.

And my heart was light.  “A few days,” I said to myself as I ran up the steps in Clarges street.

“Miss Fanny at home?” to the man, or rather to the member of Parliament, who opened the door—­“Miss Meyrick, I mean.”

“Yes, sir—­in the drawing-room, sir;” and he announced me with a flourish.

Fanny sat in the window.  She might have been looking out for me, for on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.

Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.

“Charlie,” she began impetuously, “I have been thinking over shipboard and Father Shamrock, and all.  You didn’t think then—­did you?—­that I cared so very much for you?  I am so glad that the Father bewitched me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you, sir—­none at all.  Can you?”

Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head together.  I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.  I had dreaded the role; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded.  The play was played out, that was evident.  The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all my little stock of property-phrases—­friendship of a life, esteem, etc.—­of no more account than a week-old playbill.

For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene, in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.

But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.

But only for a moment.  It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in the world—­the bravura style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a difficult bar.

It was delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father, and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.

I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.

But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody.  It was simply Mrs. D——­, with a large traveling party.  They came straight to London, and summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.

I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom I had last seen driving round Central Park.  But the twin Skye terriers who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.