I'll go crazy if I
don't see something of people. I'm sure you'll come as often as you
can. I know you too well to think you'll be sensitive about coming
there, or being reminded of George. Thank heaven you're too well-
balanced," Miss Fanny concluded, with a profound fervour, "you're too
well-balanced to let anything affect you deeply about that--that
monkey!"
The four photographs and the painted Florentine box went to their
cremation within the same hour that Miss Fanny spoke; and a little
later Lucy called her father in, as he passed her door, and pointed to
the blackened area on the underside of the mantelpiece, and to the
burnt heap upon the coal, where some metallic shapes still retained
outline. She flung her arms about his neck in passionate sympathy,
telling him that she knew what had happened to him; and presently he
began to comfort her and managed an embarrassed laugh.
"Well, well--" he said. "I was too old for such foolishness to be
getting into my head, anyhow."
"No, no!" she sobbed. "And if you knew how I despise myself for--for
ever having thought one instant about--oh, Miss Fanny called him the
right name: that monkey! He is!"
"There, I think I agree with you," Eugene said grimly, and in his eyes
there was a steady light of anger that was to last.
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