is hand. The flush in his face, as he took the hand which was
offered him, reflected the color in the face of the owner, but the
grayish brown eyes, which he remembered so well, looked into his, a
little curiously, perhaps, but frankly and kindly. She was the first to
speak.

"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 ti