But not with the methods of Mrs. Fotheringham. No!--what have
politics to do with--with--
She dropped her face in her hands, laughing to herself, the delicious
tremors of first love running through her. Would she hear from him? She
understood she was to be written to, though she had never asked it. But
ought she to allow it? Was it _convenable_? She knew that girls now did
what they liked--threw all the old rules overboard. But--proudly--she
stood by the old rules; she would do nothing "fast" or forward. Yet she
was an orphan--standing alone; surely for her there might be more
freedom than for others?
She hurried home. With the rush of new happiness had come back the old
pity, the old yearning. It wasn't, wasn't Fanny's fault! She--Diana--had
always understood that Mr. Merton was a vulgar, grasping man of no
breeding who had somehow entrapped "your aunt Bertha--who was very
foolish and very young"--into a most undesirable marriage. As for Mrs.
Merton--Aunt Bertha--Fanny had with her many photographs, among them
several of her mother. A weak, heavy face, rather pretty still. Diana
had sought her own mother in it, with a passionate yet shrinking
curiosity, only to provoke a rather curt reply from Fanny, in answer to
a question she had, with difficulty, brought herself to put:
"Not a bit! There wasn't a scrap of likeness between mother and Aunt
Sparling.
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