But the next day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge.  It was spring indeed—­bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear and warm.

“Let me begin,” said my wife as she took her old seat under the sheltering pine.  “You can’t have anything to say, Charlie, in comparison with me.”

There was a short preliminary pause, and then she began.

CHAPTER XII.

“Well, after you wouldn’t take me to Europe, you know—­”

“You naughty girl!”

“No interruptions, sir.  After you couldn’t take me to Europe I felt very much hurt and wounded, and ready to catch at any straw of suspicion.  I ran away from you that night and left you in the parlor, hoping that you would call me back, and yet longing to hide myself from you too.  You understand?”

“Yes, let us not dwell on that.”

“Well, I believe I never thought once of Fanny Meyrick’s going to Europe too until she joined us on the road that day—­you remember?—­at the washerwoman’s gate.”

“Yes; and do you remember how Fidget and I barked at her with all our hearts?”

“I was piqued then at the air of ownership Fanny seemed to assume in you.  She had just come to Lenox, I knew; she could know nothing of our intimacy, our relations; and this seemed like the renewal of something old—­something that had been going on before.  Had she any claim on you?  I wondered.  And then, too, you were so provokingly reticent about her whenever her name had been mentioned before.”

“Was I?  What a fool I was!  But, Bessie dear, I could not say to even you, then, that I believed Fanny Meyrick was in—­cared a great deal for me.”

“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—­”