"Heavens! To think--Oh, Charlie," with a sudden burst, "it's
all my doing! How can I ever tell you?"
"You hear from Bessie, then? Is she--is she well? Where is she? What
is all this?" And I seated myself again and tried to speak calmly, for
I saw that something very painful was to be said--something that she
could hardly say; and I wanted to help her, though how I knew not.
At this moment the door opened and "papa" came in. He evidently saw
that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took in the
situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the future
son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.
"Oh, papa," said Fanny, rising with evident relief, "just come and
talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he wants to take with
him."
It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to have
his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of the
English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
brought me to England.
"A very unpresentable son-in-law," I read in his eye, while he was
evidently astonished at his daughter's prolonged absence.
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