We continue our serialisation of Anne by Constance Fenimore Woolson

“Miss Vanhorn had no intention of betraying her impression for the amusement of her ancient enemy”

Anne greeted her grandaunt with the same mixture of timidity and hope, which she had shown at their first interview.  But Miss Vanhorn’s face stiffened into rigidity as she surveyed her.

“She   is impressed at last,” thought   the   old   Frenchwoman, folding   her   hands contentedly and leaning back in her chair, at rest (temporarily) from her labors.

But if impressed, Miss Vanhorn had no intention of betraying her impression for the amusement of her ancient enemy; she told Anne curtly to put on her bonnet, that she had come to take her for a drive. Once safely in the carriage, she extracted from her niece, who willingly answered, every detail of her acquaintance with Helen, and the holiday visit, bestowing with her own eyes, meanwhile, a close scrutiny upon the black dress, with whose texture and simplicity even her angry annoyance could find no fault.

“She wants to get something out of you, of course,” she said, abruptly, when the story was told;  “Helen Lorrington is a thoroughly selfish woman.  I know her well.  She introduced you, I suppose, as Miss Vanhorn’s niece?”

“Oh no, grandaunt. She has no such thought.”

“What do you know of her thoughts? You continue to go there?”

“Sometimes, on Sundays—when she asks me.”

“Very well. But you are not to go again when company is expected; I positively forbid it. You were not brought down from your island to attend evening parties. You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you are planning for a situation here at Moreau’s next winter?” said the old woman, after a pause, peering at Anne suspiciously.

“I could not fill it, grandaunt; I could only teach in a country school.”

“At Newport, or some such place, then?”

“I could not get a position of that kind.”

“Mrs. Lorrington could help you.”

“I have not asked her to help me.”

“I thought perhaps she had some such idea of her own,” continued Miss Vanhorn. “You can probably prop up that fife-like voice of hers in a way she likes; and besides, you are a good foil for her, with your big shoulders and bread-and-milk face. You little simpleton, don’t you know that to even the most skillful flirt a woman friend of some kind or other is necessary as background and support?”

“No, I did not know it,” said Anne, in a disheartened voice.

“What a friend for Helen Lorrington!  No wonder she has pounced upon you! You would never see one of her manœuvres, although done within an inch of you. With your believing eyes, and your sincerity, you are worth your weight in silver to that straw- faced mermaid. But, after all, I do not interfere. Let her only obtain a good situation for you next year, and pay you back in more useful coin than fine dresses, and I make no objection.”

She settled herself anew in the corner of the carriage, and began the process of extracting a seed, while Anne, silent and dejected, gazed into the snow-covered street, asking herself whether Helen and all this world were really as selfish and hypocritical as her grandaunt represented. But these thoughts soon gave way to the predominant one,

The one that always came to her when with Miss Vanhorn—the thought of her mother. “During the summer, do you still live in the old country house on the Hudson, grandaunt?”

Miss Vanhorn, who had just secured a seed, dropped it. “I am not aware that my old country house is anything to you,” she answered, tartly, fitting on her flapping glove- fingers, and beginning a second search.

A sob rose in Anne’s throat; but she quelled it. Her mother had spent all her life, up to the time of her marriage, at that old river homestead.

Soon after this, Madame Moreau sent out cards of invitation for one of her musical evenings.  Miss Vanhorn’s   card was accompanied   by a little note in Tante’s own handwriting.

“The invitation is merely a compliment which I give myself the pleasure of paying to a distinguished patron of my school” (wrote the old French lady). “There will be nothing worthy of her ear—a simple school-girls’ concert, in which Miss Douglas (who will have the kind assistance of Mrs. Lorrington) will take part.  I cannot urge, for so unimportant an affair, the personal presence of Miss Vanhorn; but I beg her to accept the enclosed card as a respectful remembrance from

“HORTENSE -PAULINE MOREAU.”

“That will bring her,” thought Tante, sealing the missive, in her old-fashioned way, with wax.

She was right; Miss Vanhorn came. Anne sang first alone. Then with Helen.

“Isn’t that Mrs. Lorrington?” said a voice behind Miss Vanhorn

“Yes. My Louise tells me that she has taken up this Miss Douglas enthusiastically—Comes here to sing with her almost every day.”

“Who is the girl?”

Miss Vanhorn prepared an especially rigid expression of countenance for the item of relationship which she supposed would follow. But nothing came; Helen was evidently waiting for a more dramatic occasion.  She felt herself respited; yet doubly angry and apprehensive.