“I understand,” said Bessie nodding.  “We’ll skip that, and take it for granted.  But you see I couldn’t take anything for granted but just what I saw that day; and the little memorandum-book and Fanny’s reminiscences nearly killed me.  I don’t know how I sat through it all.  I tried to avoid you all the rest of the day.  I wanted to think, and to find out the truth from Fanny.”

“I should think you did avoid me pretty successfully, leaving me to dine coldly at the hotel, and then driving all the afternoon till train-time.”

“It was in talking to Fanny that afternoon that I discovered how she felt toward you.  She has no concealment about her, not any, and I could read her heart plainly enough.  But then she hinted at her father’s treatment of you; thought he had discouraged you, rebuffed you, and reasoned so that I fairly thought there might be truth in it, remembering it was before you knew me."

“Listen one minute, Bessie, till I explain that.  It’s my belief, and always was, that that shrewd old fellow, Henry Meyrick, saw very clearly how matters were all along—­saw how the impetuous Miss Fanny was—­”

“Falling in love:  don’t pause for a ‘more tenderer word,’ Charlie.  Sam Weller couldn’t find any.”

“Well, falling in love, if you will say it—­and that it was decidedly a difficult situation for me.  I remember so well that night on the piazza, when Fanny clung about me like a mermaid, he bade her sharply go and change her dripping garments, and what Fanny calls ’a decidedly queer’ expression came into his face.  He could not say anything, poor old chap! and he always behaved with great courtesy to me.  I am sure he divined that I was a most unimpassioned actor in that high-comedy plunge into the Hudson.”

“Very well:  I believe it, I’m sure, but, you see, how could I know then what was or was not true?  Then it was that I resolved to give you leave—­or rather give her leave to try.  I had written my note in the morning, saying no finally to the Europe plan, and I scrawled across it, in lead-pencil, while Fanny stood at her horse’s head, those ugly words, you remember?”

“Yes,” I said:  “’Go to Europe with Fanny Meyrick, and come up to Lenox, both of you, when you return.’”

“Then, after that, my one idea was to get away from Lenox.  The place was hateful to me, and you were writing those pathetic letters about being married, and state-rooms, and all.  It only made me more wretched, for I thought you were the more urgent now that you had been lacking before.  I hurried aunt off to Philadelphia, and in New York she hurried me.  She would not wait, though I did want to, and I was so disappointed at the hotel!  But I thought there was a fate in it to give Fanny Meyrick her chance, poor thing! and so I wrote that good-bye note without an address.”

“But I found you, for all, thanks to Dr. R——!”

“Yes, and when you came that night I was so happy.  I put away all fear:  I had to remind myself, actually, all the time, of what I owed to Fanny, until you told me you had changed your passage to the Algeria, and that gave me strength to be angry.  Oh, my dear, I’m afraid you’ll have a very bad wife.  Of course the minute you had sailed I began to be horribly jealous, and then I got a letter by the pilot that made me worse.”