y 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."

"But I wrote letters to her, too, asking what had become of you."

"She went to Minnesota, you know, early in February."

"And why didn't you go with her?"

"She scolded me dreadfully because I would not. But she was so well,
and she had her maid and a pleasant party of Philadelphia friends; and
I--well, I didn't want to put all those hundreds of miles between me
and the sea."

"And was Shaker Village so near, then, to th