“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.”

“But,” said I, “you got my letters from the other side.  Didn’t that assure you that you might have faith in me?”

“But I would not receive them.  Aunt Sloman has them all, done up and labeled for you, doubtless.  She, it seems—­had you talked her over?—­thought I ought to have gone with you, and fretted because she was keeping me.  Then I couldn’t bear it another day.  It was just after you had sailed, and I had cut out the ship-list to send you; and I had worked myself up to believe you would go back to Fanny Meyrick if you had the chance.  I told Aunt Sloman that it was all over between us—­that you might continue to write to me, but I begged that she would keep all your letters in a box until I should ask her for them.”