Fanny Hetherton would have given much to know the
answer which Dr. Simon Bellamy mentally gave to that question, put by
one whom he had known but little more than three months. It was not
fair for Lucy to steal away all Fanny's beaux, as she surely had been
doing ever since her feet touched the soil of the New World, and truth
to tell, Fanny had borne it very well, until young Dr. Bellamy showed
signs of desertion. Then the spirit of resistance was roused, and she
watched her lover narrowly, gnashing her teeth sometimes when she saw
his ill-concealed admiration for her sprightly little cousin, who
could say and do with perfect impunity so many things which in another
would have been improper to the last degree. She was a tolerably
correct reader of human nature, and, from the moment she witnessed the
meeting between Lucy and the rector of St. Marks, she took courage,
for she readily guessed the channel in which her cousin's preference
ran. The rector, however, she could not read so well; but few men she
knew could withstand the fascinations of her cousin, backed as they
were, by the glamour of half a million; and, though her mother, and,
possibly, her father, too, would be shocked at the _mesalliance_ and
throw obstacles in the way, she was capable of removing them all, and
she would do it, too, sooner than lose the only man she had ever cared
for.
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