Why did you try to hide that Mrs. Grove and you
were alone?"
"To stop all this!" He dropped the magazine upon the floor. "To save my
nerves and the noise of your eternal questions. I knew, if you found
out, what would follow; this isn't the first time."
"You can't be completely trusted," she replied. "I have always had to
worry and hold you up. If it hadn't been for me--but there is no use in
going into that. You must tell me about the Grove woman."
"At one time it was Mrs. Grove," he observed; "now it is 'the Grove
woman.' What will you call her next?"
"You will have to tell me that," Fanny said. "Lee Randon, what must I
call her?"
"Perhaps, if you knew her, you'd try Savina."
"Not if it was to save me from dying. But I have no doubt of which you
preferred. Did you?"
"Did I what?" He was aware that his speech was growing far louder than
necessary.
"Call her Savina."
"Yes!" He sat glaring at her in an anger which he felt swelling his
neck.
Fanny's expression was obscure. At his admission she had shivered, as
though it had reached her in the form of an actually threatened
violence, and then she was rigid. "I knew that, all the while." Her
voice was low, with a pause between the words. "Savina"; she repeated
the name experimentally. "Very pretty. Prettier to say than Fanny; yes,
and newer. And, having called her that, you couldn't very well not kiss
her, could you?"
However, his caution had again asserted itself over the dangers of a
lost temper.
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