of the
bank, who's always there, to tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would
like to speak with him, and then I took a seat, and in a minute in came
Charlie, with just his usual look.

"Now, I want to tell you that I've never had one unpleasant word with
Charlie Hunt; I've always liked him real well. I put down my foot
against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said
about it. I balked, but I didn't kick. All along I've been just as nice
to him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin
into him the night of the _veglione_, not supposing that he'd ever
know who did it.

"Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he came
and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn't much time to
spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the
wedding, and he listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I
noticed that he once or twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs.
Hawthorne. Now I must go back and tell you that some time ago when I was
at the bank he casually asked me if I knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in
Florence, and he showed me two letters in the same handwriting, one
addressed to the English bank, and the other to the American bank,
Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini's for some time, and no
one had called for and they didn't know what to do with. Now, the
instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who'd written them, what was
in them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me,
you know, are first sent to Estelle's house in East Boston, to be
forwarded to us wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had
escaped. That letter was from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman
called Iona Allen, who boarded once at the same house with me on
Springfield Street,--the languishing kind of critter that I never could
stand, who hadn't the gumption of a half-drowned chicken, who'd never
stuck to anything or put any elbow-grease into the work on hand, and
whined all the time, and was looking out for some one to support her. I
guessed she'd heard of my money and was writing me a sweet letter of
congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. I'd have liked to get
hold of her letter, but didn't exactly see how I could. I said to
Charlie, 'Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one it's meant for
among my acquaintances.' But he didn't seem to think that could be done;
so there the matter dropped. I didn