was still
at Cacouna, and yet a horrible certainty took possession of him that, if
he could only get on board that ship, so tantalizingly close at hand and
yet so utterly inaccessible, he should find her there. He strained his
eyes in the vain effort to distinguish her figure. He almost stamped
with disappointment when he found that the distance was too great, or
his glass not sufficiently powerful, for the forms he could just see, to
be recognizable; and as the two steamers passed on, and the distance
between them grew every moment greater, he hurried down to his cabin,
not caring that any one should see how disturbed he was. He threw
himself upon his little sofa, thinking.

"I wonder if she suspected I was so near her. I wonder whether she
looked for me as I looked for her. Not _as_ I did, of course, for she is
everything to me, and I am only an old friend to her; but yet I think
she would have been sorry to miss me by so little.

"What an idiot I am! when I have not even the smallest notion whether
she could be on board or not. Very likely I shall find them still at the
dear old Cottage."

But after his soliloquy he shook his head in a disconsolate manner, and
betook himself to a novel by way of distraction.

Two more days and they reached New York. They got in early in the
morning, and Maurice, the moment he found himself on shore, hurried to
the railway station. On inquiry there, however, he found that to start
immediately would be, in fact, rather to lose, than to gain time. A
train starting that evening would be his speediest conveyance; and for
that he resolved to wait. He then turned to a telegraph office,
intending to send a message to his father, but on second thoughts
abandoned that idea also, considering that Mr. Leigh already expected
him, and that further warning could do no good and might do harm.

He spent the day, he scarcely knew how. He dined somewhere, and read the
newspapers. He found himself out in the middle of reading with the
greatest appearance of interest an article copied from the _Times_ which
he had read in England weeks before. He looked perpetually at his watch,
and when, at last, he found that his train would be due in half an hour,
he started up in the greatest haste, and drove to the station as if he
had not a moment to spare.

What a Babel the car seemed when he did get into it! There were numbers
of women and children, not a few babies. It was bitterly cold, and
everybody was