e as I stood in the doorway. A
little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me, but her manner
changed as she took my hand.

"I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for staying away
so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn't you send us word
that you were ill? Papa is a capital nurse."

"But I have not been ill," I said, bewildered, "only very busy and
very anxious."

"I should think so," still holding my hand, and looking into my face
with an expression of deep concern. "Poor fellow! You do look worn.
Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let me take care of
you. You need rest."

And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the soft
crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a friendly
voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered with a
tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a delicious sense
of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing over me.

"I can't imagine what keeps papa," she said, chatting away with
woman's tact: "he always smokes after dinner, and comes up to me for
his cup of tea afterward."

Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and fragrant, "I
should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on board the steamer if
I had known it was going to end in this way."

_This way_! Then Bessie must have told her.

"End?" I said stammering: "what--what end?"

"In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took that
long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great thing
for a young lawyer to have such responsibility."

Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
jumped to my feet: "Was that _all_ she told you? Didn't she tell you
that we were engaged?"

For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek, the
steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left her
pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver sugar-tongs
that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were fixed on me
with a wild, beseeching expression.

"Did you not know," I said in softer tones, still standing by the
table and looking down on her, "that day at Lenox that we were
engaged? Was it not for _that_ you congratulated me on board the
steamer?"

A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, "Indeed, no! Oh dear! what have I
done?"

"You?--nothing!" I said with a sickly smile; "but there is some
mistake, some mystery. I have never