rmured. "I wanted to say so, but it's only old Fanny, so whatever
she says--even when it's sympathy--pick on her for it! Hammer her!" She
sobbed. "Hammer her! It's only poor old lonely Fanny!"

"You look here!" George said harshly. "When I spoke to my Uncle George
after that rotten thing I heard Aunt Amelia say about my mother, he
said if there was any gossip it was about you! He said people might be
laughing about the way you ran after Morgan, but that was all."

Fanny lifted her hands, clenched them, and struck them upon her knees.
"Yes; it's always Fanny!" she sobbed. "Ridiculous old Fanny--always,
always!"

"You listen!" George said. "After I'd talked to Uncle George I saw you;
and you said I had a mean little mind for thinking there might be truth
in what Aunt Amelia said about people talking. You denied it. And that
wasn't the only time; you'd attacked me before then, because I intimated
that Morgan might be coming here too often. You made me believe that
mother let him come entirely on your account, and now you say--"

"I think he did," Fanny interrupted desolately. "I think he did come as
much to see me as anything--for a while it looked like it. Anyhow, he
liked to dance with me. He danced with me as much as he danced with her,
and he acted as if he came on my account at least as much as he did on
hers. He did act a good deal that way--and if Wilbur hadn't died--"

"You told me there wasn't any talk."

"I didn't think there was much, then," Fanny protested. "I didn't know
how much there was."

"What!"

"People don't come and tell such things to a person's family, you know.
You don't suppose anybody was going to say to George Amberson that his
sister was getting herself talked about, do you? Or that they were going
to say much to me?"

"You told me," said George, fiercely, "that mother never saw him except
when she was chaperoning you."

"They weren't much alone together, then," Fanny returned. "Hardly
ever, before Wilbur died. But you don't suppose that stops people from
talking, do you? Your father never went anywhere, and people saw Eugene
with her everywhere she went--and though I was with them people just
thought"--she choked--"they just thought I didn't count! 'Only old Fanny
Minafer,' I suppose they'd say! Besides, everybody knew that he'd been
engaged to her--"

"What's that?" George cried.

"Everybody knows it. Don't you remember your grandfather speaking of it
at the Sunday dinner one ni