Can you?"
Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,
and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.
I had dreaded the _role_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I
own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played
out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a
late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all my
little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,
etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.
For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,
in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I
should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and in
which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and
calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being
beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.
But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe
I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.
But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact
which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in the world--the
_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a
difficult bar.
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