“You here?” she said.  “I thought you had sailed in the Russia!  Bessie told me you were to go then.”

“Did she know,” I asked, “that you were going by this steamer?”

On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts:  my question concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment, and looked up gayly:  “Oh yes:  that was fixed months ago.  I told her about it at Lenox.”

“And did she tell you something else?” I asked sharply.

“Oh yes.  I was very glad to hear of your good prospect.  Do be congratulated, won’t you?”

Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick’s way.  “Good prospect!” Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement with Bessie?

I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering expression of the situation had it been any other woman.  But a lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.

It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way.  She was a most provokingly good sailor, too.  Other women stayed below or were carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse or be amused.

I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the Trois Mousquetaires for company.  But it seemed to me, as she knew of my engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.  Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.  Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?

Perhaps, after all, there was no secret.  Perhaps her feeling was only one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the Hudson River.  I did not know.

Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she introduced me on our third day out—­Father Shamrock, an Irish priest, long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth.  How he had obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy, fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.

“Pshaw!” thought I, “what a nuisance!” for I shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed.  Nor was his appearance prepossessing—­one of Froude’s “tonsured peasants,” as I looked down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad beardlessness of the face of the padre.  But his voice, rich and mellow, attracted me in spite of myself.  His eyes were sparkling with kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.

A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.  They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.