as
clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie
with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to
sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was
going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might
have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.

Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had
given it room to grow.

My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's
pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!

And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were
engaged. _Had she not_?

My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.
Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those
pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I
should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office
said "Stick to it," and I stayed.

Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
a patient holding of my end of the clue.

In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
that his father was in Florida--that he had communicated with him, but
regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart's present
address.

Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long
since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud.
She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring
myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between
us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was the
unconscious cause.

At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we were
in the new year, I could bear it no longer. "Come what will, I must
know if Bessie writes to her."

I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the Meyricks'
parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting alone, reading
by a table. She looked up in surpris