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"Very well, then, Fanny may go, Edmund."
The good news soon followed her. Edmund knocked at her door in his way to his own.
"Well, Fanny, it is all happily settled, and without the smallest hesitation on your uncle's side. He had but one opinion. You are to go."
"Thank you, I am so glad," was Fanny's instinctive reply; though when she had turned from him and shut the door, she could not help feeling, "and yet, why should I be glad? for am I not certain of seeing or hearing something there to pain me?"
In spite of this conviction, however, she was glad. Simple as such an engagement might appear in other eyes, it had novelty and importance in her's, for excepting the day at Sotherton, she had scarcely ever dined out before; and though now going only half a mile and only to three people, still it was dining out, and all the little interests of pre-
