"What joke is this?" I said as I scanned it more closely.
By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie has
denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
out--not a penciled word even!
The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia was
clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie
with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to
sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was
going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might
have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.
Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had
given it room to grow.
My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's
pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!
And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were
engaged. _Had she not_?
My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.
Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those
pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I
should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office
said "Stick to it," and I stayed.
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