“Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed, starting up, and removing her handkerchief, so that he saw her usually pale cheeks were crimson—­ “Oh, no,” she cried, with panting breath and heaving chest.  “It is all well with them as yet.  But—­but—­it’s your brother.”

He was at no loss now as to what his brother could have done, but he stood confounded, with a sense of personal share in the offence, and his first words were—­ “I am very sorry.  I never thought of this.”

“No, indeed,” she exclaimed, “who could?  It was too preposterous to be dreamt of by any one.  At his age, too, one would have thought he might have known better.”

A secret sense of amusement crossed the Colonel, as he recollected that the disparity between Fanny Curtis and Sir Stephen Temple had been far greater than that between Lady Temple and Lord Keith, but the little gentle lady was just at present more like a fury than he had thought possible, evidently regarding what had just passed as an insult to her husband and an attack on the freedom of all her sons.  In answer to a few sympathising words on the haste of his brother’s proceeding, she burst out again with indignation almost amusing in one so soft—­ “Haste!  Yes!  I did think that people would have had some respect for dear, dear Sir Stephen,” and her gush of tears came with more of grief and less of violence, as if she for the first time felt herself unprotected by her husband’s name.

“I am very much concerned,” he repeated, feeling sympathy safer than reasoning.  “If I could have guessed his intentions, I would have tried to spare you this; at least the suddenness of it.  I could not have guessed at such presumptuous expectations on so short an acquaintance.”

“He did not expect me to answer at once,” said Fanny.  “He said he only meant to let me know his hopes in coming here.  And, oh, that’s the worst of it!  He won’t believe me, though I said more to him than I thought I could have said to anybody!  I told him,” said Fanny, with her hands clasped over her knee to still her trembling, “that I cared for my dear, dear husband, and always shall—­always—­and then he talked about waiting, just as if anybody could leave off loving one’s husband!  And then when he wanted me to consider about my children, why then I told him”—­and her voice grew passionate again—­ “the more I considered, the worse it would be for him, as if I would have my boys know me without their father’s name; and, besides, he had not been so kind to you that I should wish to let him have anything to do with them!  I am afraid I ought not to have said that,” she added, returning to something of her meek softness; “but indeed I was so angry, I did not know what I was about.  I hope it will not make him angry with you.”

“Never mind me,” said Colonel Keith, kindly.  “Indeed, Lady Temple, it is a wonderful compliment to you that he should have been ready to undertake such a family.”