She increased in stature, and filled out, thriving on the rich libations of in-breeding, until she attained the massive, though proportionate curves of the Grecian Venus. Her existence was an ideal one. She loved but one man on earth. He returned her affection and was entirely faithful to her, thinking no more of any other female, and showering gifts on his daughter-concubine.
A cloud now passed over the happy home of Sandcross. His wife fell ill. Continuous gastronomical excesses, and a growing disinclination to put her foot to the ground or even go outside the house, had reduced Fanny's mother to the rank of an obese invalid. She developed rheumatic gout, and after several long illnesses and relapses, devotedly attended and nursed by her husband and daughter, it was discovered that her heart was touched and great care was therefore necessary.
Fanny was getting near the age of twenty, when the doctors gave their verdict, Mrs. Sandcross being convalescent after a more than usually painful crisis of her malady. She was ordered change of air; a season in her native country was the thing for her. So she went by easy stages to Buxton to spend the month of August and part of September in a hydropathic establishment. Fanny and her father accompanied her. All three were greatly fatigued; the sick woman and her two faithful nurses. Miss Sandcross was invited to stop with some friends at Pulborough in Sussex; and papa was forced to return to business in Paris. At that moment, he could not leave the capital for more than forty-eight hours at a time.
Papa and his Fan were greatly grieved at this their first separation, but they both needed rest and a change after the sleepless nights of anxious watching passed in turns by the bedside of the suffering mother.
About the middle of September, mamma was much better in health, though still rather weak, and she was allowed to depart from the sanatorium. Fanny's visit had come to an end and she was dying to be clasped to her father's arms once more. The Arcadian pleasures of honest English homes soon palled upon her, and she found the nights ridiculously long, as she tossed on her solitary spring mattress in the best guest room. She was courted and adulated by the finest young men one could wish to set eyes upon, gentlemen athletes, skilled in all sports and gentle as sucking-doves with the fair sex, but none of those who worshipped at the shrine of her beauty or fell stricken to the heart by the magic of her violet, marvelling orbs, made the slightest impression. She would have given all the picked lives at Pulborough and its vicinity for one, soft, lingering kiss from the parental lips. She loved her father deeply, truly, loyally.
Sandcross had arranged to go to England to fetch his wife and daughter, returning to France by way of Dieppe, meeting Fanny at Lewes as she left the Pulborough people, and proceeding to Newhaven with her, where father and daughter would meet Mrs. Sandcross returning from Buxton, and thus all three could embark and cross the Channel together.
All the dates were carefully arranged by Mr. Sandcross, and he had a motive in being so punctilious. He had not seen Fanny for nearly two months, and as he was getting on in years, full of business cares, and wary now of the wiles of professional prostituted beauties, we may surmise that he had been faithful to his own girl as he called her. He was burning for a quiet night with her, and had arranged things splendidly as he thought.
Mamma, of course, knew the day on which her husband would meet their daughter at Lewes, lunch with her there, and bring her on to Newhaven, but what she could not divine was that Fanny had arranged to leave Pulborough on the eve of the day notified to her mother, so as to get a night with her papa in the same bed, and then go on to Newhaven next morning. Sandcross was also to leave Paris twelve hours before the time stated to his wife. His good lady, rather feeble after her severe bout of illness, obliged to take minute doses of digitalis, thought it would be better to start from Buxton a day before the time fixed by her husband and sleep at Lewes. She really did not feel equal to going right through to Paris. It would be a nice little surprise, too, for Sandcross and Fanny when they met to have lunch, to find mama at Lewes having preceded them, instead of waiting their arrival at Newhaven.
The fun of her pleasant little trick sustained the poor lady on her journey, albeit she was but the shadow of her former self, walking and breathing with difficulty. She reached Lewes safely shortly after sunset and arrived at the specified hotel.
She asked for a room, and telling her name, explained how being unaccompanied, she wished to dine and sleep and meet her husband and daughter the next day. The reply came readily that Mr. Sandcross had just been in, had engaged the big room on the first floor for himself and lady, and had stepped out again.
Mrs. Sandcross, still really very ill, could not worry her enfeebled brain about this strange coincidence, and jumped at the muddled conclusion that somehow or the other she had misunderstood her husband's letter, which was in her reticule, and he was no doubt expecting her.
She replied with gasping utterances-it was strange now how the least excitement made her pant and tremble-that she was the lady in question, and would go up to her husband's room.
Once in the comfortable single-bedded, clean, old-fashioned chamber, she was glad to get off her hat and jacket and sit down to rest. There was a nice, antique, padded chair with big arms behind a light screen near the fireplace. She would recline there and have a nap until her good hubby returned. How she longed to see him and her handsome, devoted daughter! They were so good to her, so kind; such splendid nurses. The poor lady dropped a tear or two, partly out of pity for her own weakened, suffering self, and also for joy at being once more with the only two persons she loved. Really, she was very low and nervous. Doctors nowadays were great faddists. Fancy!-nothing but to live on for two months! No wonder she was all to pieces and starting at every sound. Wait until she got back to Paris. She would soon get her strength up with Normandy beef, grand fat fowls and fine old Bordeaux, not forgetting aged vintage Champagne. It was time for another little sip of that nasty digitalis stuff, and she must read- hubby's letter-dear Oliver!-silly mistake-Sandcross always so particular too-doctors softening her brain- no more milk-so tired-my reticule. And Mrs. Sand-cross dozed peacefully in her comfortable armchair.
It was now dusk and the low-ceilinged room was full of deep shadow when Mr. Sandcross, escorting Fanny whom he had fetched at the railway station, came gently into the bedchamber.
The door was no sooner closed and locked than by a mutual impulse, they fell into each other's arms, upstanding, and their mouths met in a kiss of long pent-up desire, tongues intertwining, lips clipping lips, and hands clasped, until Sandcross threw his arms round her, moulding her buttocks with one hand while he pressed her close to him with the other so as to feel her perfect bust crushed and throbbing against his breast. They ceased for want of breath and lost no words in idle talk. Fanny left his clasp, took off her hat, and throwing her slight bolero behind her, began feverishly unhooking her bodice. Sandcross, congested, his outstretched hands trembling, stepped towards her. Fanny waved him off.
"Undress, pa darling! We shall just have time before dinner. Make haste, I'm longing for you much more than you are for me!"
With a merry smile of denial, Sandcross tore off all the armour of civilisation, but despite his celerity, Fanny was naked, save natty nut brown shoes and stockings, long before he had struggled out of laced boots and spun silk drawers.
He caught her again in his arms, drunk with delight as he once more felt her naked, tightly stretched, smooth skin against his sturdy, hairy The enamoured father would have dragged her to the bed, but she resisted.