Only we will have to go to town tomorrow.
Mamma has not a stitch."

"The devil!" muttered Annandale in fierce self-reprobation. "Hang my
stupidity. I am a fool."

"You are nothing of the kind. If it were not for you I would not have
a stitch either."

"That is all very well. But I have bungled matters dreadfully. I don't
know what your mother can think of me. I do know, though, that I wish
she would let me replace the things which she has lost through my
fault."

In the sky a star was falling, swiftly, silently, like a drop of water
on a window-pane. Fanny watched it. She had been lolling back in a
chair. But at Annandale's suggestion she sat up. "That is absurd," she
announced.

"Well, then, it would be only nice and fair of you to put me in a
position where, without offense, I could do so."

But Fanny was rising. "It is late," she announced. "I must go."

Annandale caught at her. "Say 'Yes,'" he implored. "Or at least don't
say 'No.' Say something."

"Something, then. There, let me be."

At that Annandale, who still held her, held her yet tighter. "You are
the dearest girl in all the world."

Fanny gave him a little shove. "Don't do that, anyone might see you."

"Yes, and see too that you belong to me."

"I am not so sure."

"You shan't go then till you are." Annandale, as he spoke, planted
himself uncircuitously before her.

"Oh," said Fanny, in a little sugary, demure voice, "if you are going
to use brute force----"

"I am."

"Then I give in."

"For keeps?"

"Don't, there's my mother."

In the doorway beyond, Mrs. Price had loomed. Fanny joined her.
Annandale followed, denouncing himself to the lady for the oversight
that noon. Yet, whether because of that oversight of his or because of
some foresight of her own, so grim was Mrs. Price that Annandale,
concluding that it would be more cheerful elsewhere, turned tail,
ambled out to the road and across it to the sea wall, where he sat and
kicked his heels and told himself that he was engaged.

In the telling he lost himself in impossibilities and wondered how it
would fare with him and how with Sylvia could the past be mended and
the old plans mature. For though Fanny allured, Sylvia enchained.
Fanny was delicious. But he fancied that other men had found her so.
He fancied that her heart had been an inn, and he knew that Sylvia's
was a home. Yet from that he was barred. To those that lack homes
hotels are convenient.

Across the way mean