romantic thing in the world, and she would tell me about it when we were
alone, but now I must go off again; he had just gone to get a book for
her which he had been speaking of, and would be back the next instant,
and it would not do to let him suppose we had been discussing him.


II.

I was sometimes disappointed in Mrs. March's mysteries when I came up
close to them; but I was always willing to take them on trust; and I
submitted to the postponement of a solution in this case with more than
my usual faith. She found time, before Mr. Glendenning reappeared, to
ask me if I had noticed a mother and daughter on the boat, the mother
evidently an invalid, and the daughter very devoted, and both decidedly
ladies; and when I said, "No. Why?" she answered, "Oh, nothing," and
that she would tell me. Then she drove me away, and we did not meet till
I found her in our state-room just before the terrible mid-day meal they
used to give you on the _Corinthian_, and called dinner.

She began at once, while she did something to her hair before the morsel
of mirror: "Why I wanted to know if you had noticed those people was
because they are the reason of his being here."

"Did he tell you that?"

"Of course not. But I knew it, for he asked if I had seen them, or could
tell him who they were."

"It seems to me that he made pretty good time to get so far as that."