"When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you had changed
your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I write it,
thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a little note
to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don't know where you were
when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember it, what I
wrote:

"'DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have
changed his passage to be with us. I know from something
that he has just told _me_ that this is so, and that he
consoles himself already for your coldness. You remember
what I told you when we talked about him. I shall _try_ now.
F.M.'

"Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what a weak,
weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought, that Bessie
did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought you _had_
cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his manner--you
weren't of an old Knickerbocker family, you know--and had given you to
understand that your visits were not acceptable.

"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put
that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa
always looked so decidedly _queer_ whenever your name was mentioned.

"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed
that in due time you would come back to me.

"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her