CHAPTER VI.
PAID IN FULL.
And whither, then, had Fanny vanished so suddenly, so untraceably, with her aunt?
It was with a feeling of despair that Teresa had listened to her niece's confession.

The girl had told her honestly that she was in love, in love body and soul, with all the fervour of her nature, with an ideal whom she had believed to be identical with the benefactor whose benefits she had one day meant to repay with a love stronger than death; and now, discovering that her secret patron was not he whom she had dreamed of, he whom once she had actually seen, and could never again forget, her heart was full of horror.

She now felt that she had acted improperly in accepting money from that other man under any pretext whatsoever, for by so doing she had placed herself under an obligation, and she trembled at the thought of it, and feared to show her face in the street lest she should meet him.

A distrust of that face grew up in her heart, and she shuddered at the idea that _that_ man was thinking of her, perhaps.

Ah, that was indeed a thorn in her soul! And the other, the ideal, there was no reason for thinking of him at all now; and yet cast him out of her heart again she could not.