“How do you do, Mr. Lenox?” she said.

“How do you do, Mrs. Ruggles?” said John, throwing up his hand as, at the moment of his reply, a puff of wind blew the cape of his mackintosh over his head.  They both laughed a little (this was their greeting after nearly six years), and sat down.

“What a nice place!” she said, looking about her.

“Yes,” said John; “I sit here a good deal when it isn’t too windy.”

“I have been wondering why I did not get a sight of you,” she said.  “I saw your name in the passenger list.  Have you been ill?”

“I’m in the second cabin,” he said, smiling.

She looked at him a little incredulously, and he explained.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “I saw your name, but as you did not appear in the dining saloon, I thought you must either be ill or that you did not sail.  Did you know that I was on board?” she asked.

It was rather an embarrassing question.

“I have been intending,” he replied rather lamely, “to make myself known to you—­that is, to—­well, make my presence on board known to you.  I got just a glimpse of you before we sailed, when you came up to speak to a man who had been saying good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles.  I heard him speak their name, and looking over the passenger list I identified you as Mrs. Edward Ruggles.”

“Ah,” she said, looking away for an instant, “I did not know that you had seen me, and I wondered how you came to address me as Mrs. Ruggles just now.”

“That was how,” said John; and then, after a moment, “it seems rather odd, doesn’t it, that we should be renewing an acquaintance on an ocean steamer as we did once before, so many years ago? and that the first bit of intelligence that I have had of you in all the years since I saw you last should come to me through the passenger list?”

“Did you ever try to get any?” she asked.  “I have always thought it very strange that we should never have heard anything about you.”

“I went to the house once, some weeks after you had gone,” said John, “but the man in charge was out, and the maid could tell me nothing.”

“A note I wrote you at the time of your father’s death,” she said, “we found in my small nephew’s overcoat pocket after we had been some time in California; but I wrote a second one before we left New York, telling you of our intended departure, and where we were going.”

“I never received it,” he said.  Neither spoke for a while, and then: 

“Tell me of your sister and brother-in-law,” he said.

“My sister is at present living in Cambridge, where Jack is at college,” was the reply; “but poor Julius died two years ago.”

“Ah,” said John, “I am grieved to hear of Mr. Carling’s death.  I liked him very much.”

“He liked you very much,” she said, “and often spoke of you.”

There was another period of silence, so long, indeed, as to be somewhat embarrassing.  None of the thoughts which followed each other in John’s mind was of the sort which he felt like broaching.  He realized that the situation was getting awkward, and that consciousness added to the confusion of his ideas.  But if his companion shared his embarrassment, neither her face nor her manner betrayed it as at last she said, turning, and looking frankly at him: