“Oh,” said I lightly, “that isn’t worth chronicling—­that!  It was no question of saving lives.  The New York boat was coming up, if I remember.”

“Yes, it was in trying to steer away from it that I dropped my oar.”

“So you see it would have picked us up, any how.  There was nothing but the ducking to remember.”

“Such a figure, Bessie!  Imagine us running along the road to the gate!  I could scarcely move for my dripping skirts; and we frightened papa so when we stepped up on the piazza out of the moonlight!”

To stop this torrent of reminiscences, which, though of nothings, I could see was bringing the red spot to Bessie’s cheek, I put out my hand for the book:  “Let me write something down to-day;” and I hastily scribbled:  “September 28.  Charles Munro and Bessie Stewart, to sail for Europe in ten days, ask of their friend Fanny Meyrick her warm congratulations.”

“Will that do?” I whispered as I handed the book to Bessie.

“Not at all,” said Bessie scornfully and coldly, tearing out the leaf as she spoke and crumpling it in her hand.—­“Sorry to spoil your book, Fanny dear, but the sentiment would have spoiled it more.  Let us go home.”

As we passed the hotel on that dreary walk home, Fanny would have left us, but Bessie clung to her and whispered something in a pleading voice, begging her, evidently, to come home with us.

“If Mr. Munro will take word to papa,” she said, indicating that worthy, who sat on the upper piazza smoking his pipe.

“We will walk on,” said Bessie coldly.  “Come, Fanny dear.”

Strange, thought I as I turned on my heel, this sudden fond intimacy!  Bessie is angry.  Why did I never tell her of the ducking?  And yet when I remembered how Fanny had clung to me, how after we had reached the shore I had been forced to remind her that it was no time for sentimental gratitude when we both were shivering, I could see why I had refrained from mentioning it to Bessie until our closer confidences would allow of it.

No man, unless he be a downright coxcomb, will ever admit to one woman that another woman has loved him.  To his wife—­perhaps.  But how much Fanny Meyrick cared for me I had never sought to know.  After the dismal ending of that moonlight boat-row—­I had been already disenchanted for some time before—­I had scarce called at Meyrick Place more than civility required.  The young lady was so inclined to exaggerate the circumstance, to hail me as her deliverer, that I felt like the hero of a melodrama whenever we met.  And after I had met Bessie there were pleasanter things to think about—­much pleasanter.

How exasperating girls can be when they try!  I had had my conge for the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at the hotel to dinner.

“I will not be played upon in this way.  Bessie knows that I stayed over the morning train just to be with her, and piled up for to-morrow no end of work, as well as sarcastic remarks from D. & Co.  If she chooses to show off her affection for Fanny Meyrick in these few hours that we have together—­Fanny Meyrick whom she hated yesterday—­she may enjoy her friendship undisturbed by me.”