“DEAR BESSIE:  I ought to have written you long ago, and thanked you for your kind invitation to go with you to your American home.  I should have liked it of all things in the world, for to see America and know what it is like, has been the dream of my life.  You knew it is the paradise of my countrymen, the land into which Pat and Bridget entered when Johnny Bull came out.  For various reasons, however, I must decline your invitation, and I am going to tell you all about it, but the beginning and the end lie so far apart that I must go way back to the time when, owing to some mistake, Jack Trevellian thought you died in Rome, and, because he thought so, he made a hermit of himself and wandered off into the Tyrol and the Bavarian Alps, where nobody spoke English, and where all he knew of the civilized world was what he gleaned from German papers.  Nobody could communicate with him, for when he wrote to his steward, as he did sometimes, he never said where a letter could reach him, or where he was going next.

“At last, however, he concluded to go home, and got as far as Paris, where grandma and I happened to be staying.  This was last August, and I was in the Rue de Rivoli one day, near Place Vendome, when, who should turn from a side street a few rods in advance of me but Jack himself, looking very rough and queer, with a long beard and a shocking hat.  He did not see me, and was walking so fast that I had to run to overtake him, and even then I might not have captured him if I had not taken the handle of my umbrella and hooked it into his coat collar behind.  This brought him to a stand-still and nearly threw him down.  You ought to have seen the expression of his face, when he turned to see who was garroting him in broad daylight, for he thought it was that.

    “‘Flossie!’ he exclaimed; ’what are you about, and what is this you
    have hitched to me?’

    “You see the umbrella was still hooked to his coat collar and
    flopping itself open.

    “‘If you will stand still I will show you what it is,’ I said,
    laughing till I cried at the comical appearance he presented, with
    the passers-by looking on wonderingly.

“I do not think he liked it very well.  No one likes to be made ridiculous; but we were soon walking together very amicably, and he was telling me where he had been, and that he was now on his way to Trevellian Castle.

    “‘I have not seen you, Flossie,’ he said—­and I wish you could have
    heard how sadly and low he spoke—­’I have not seen you since Bessie
    died in Rome.  You were with her, I believe?’

    “‘Bessie died in Rome!’ I exclaimed.  ’What do you mean?  Bessie did
    not die in Rome.  She is not dead at all.  She has gone to America in
    the same ship with Grey Jerrold.’