“She spoke of you with high praise and warm affection; yet, even here, there was alloy, a dash of evil, a rending darkness; for in the midst of it she could exclaim, ‘Why would not she have him? It is all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object. He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again. It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.’ Could you have believed it possible? But the charm is broken. My eyes are opened.”

“Cruel!” said Fanny, “quite cruel. At such a moment to give way to gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you! Absolute cruelty.”

“Cruelty, do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unawareness of there being such feelings; in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to treat the subject as she did.”

“Oh, Edmund,” said Fanny yet again after all these months. “She is a vampire.”

And for the first time Edmund did not ignore it. He looked at Fanny directly, with unflinching eyes, as he continued:

“Yes, Fanny, now I know. But first, a moment more, I pray, let me continue. Thus—She was speaking only as she had been used to hear others speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would—In addition to regular vampirism, hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind—which is undead indeed, I now admit. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. I told her so.”

“Did you?”

“Yes; when I left her I told her so.”

“How long were you together?”

“Five-and-twenty minutes. Well, she went on to say that what remained now to be done was to bring about a marriage between them. She spoke of it, Fanny, with a steadier voice than I can.”

He was obliged to pause more than once as he continued, while in such pauses Fanny discreetly tried to flex her petrifying limbs. Then, he went on again: