Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/216

 last, stroking her cousin's elderly hand in the dark. "I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, dear," answered Miss Miner, simply and gratefully.

It was little enough, but little as it was it made them both more silent than ever. With the boatman close before them, it was impossible to talk of what was in their thoughts. Fanny, for her part, was glad of it. She had understood her old-maid cousin since the night when Cordelia had broken down and laughed and cried in the garden, and she knew how little there could be to say. But Cordelia did not understand Fanny in the least. It was a marvel to her that any one should prefer Lawrence to Brinsley—almost as great a marvel as that she herself, in her sober middle age, should have felt what she knew was love and believed to be passion.

And now, Brinsley was going, and it was over. He would never come back, and she should never see him again—she was sure of that, she was only an old maid; a middle-aged gentlewoman who had never possessed any great attraction for anybody; who had always been more or less poor