I was self-convicted of wrong; yes, Rose, of a great and an
irreparable wrong. I shut my eyes; I tried to look in other
directions; but the truth, once seen, could not pass from the range
of mental vision. I have never told you that I saw Mr. Emerson five
years ago. The effect of that meeting was such that I could not
speak of it, even to you. We met on one of the river steamboats--met
and looked into each other's eyes for just a moment. It may only be
a fancy of mine, but I have thought sometimes that, but for this
seemingly accidental meeting, he would have married again."

"Why do you think so?" asked Mrs. Everet.

Irene did not answer for some moments. She hardly dared venture to
put what she had seen in words. It was something that she felt more
like hiding even from her own consciousness, if that were possible.
But, having ventured so far, she could not well hold back. So she
replied, keeping her voice into as dead a level as it was possible
to assume:

"He was sitting in earnest conversation with a young lady, and from
the expression of her face, which I could see, the subject on which
he was speaking was evidently one in which more than her thought was
interested. I felt at the time that he was on the verge of a new
life-experiment--was about venturing upon a sea on which he had once
made shipwreck. Suddenly he turned half around and looked at me
before I had time to withdraw my eyes--looked at me with a strange,
surprised, startled look. In another moment a form came between us;
when it passed I was lost from his gaze in the crowd of passengers.
I have puzzled myself a great many times over that fact of his
turning his eyes, as if from some hidden impulse, just to the spot
where I was sitting. There are no accidents--as I have often heard
you say--in the common acceptation of the term; therefore this was
no accident."

"It was a providence," said Rose.

"And to what end?" asked Irene.

Mrs. Everet shook her head.

"I will not even presume to conjecture."

Irene sighed, and then sat lost in thought. Recovering herself, she
said:

"Since that time I have been growing less and less satisfied with
that brief, troubled portion of my life which closed so
disastrously. I forgot how much the happiness of another was
involved. A blind, willful girl, struggling in imaginary bonds, I
thought only of myself, and madly rent apart the ties which death
only should have sundered. For five years, Rose, I have carr