not
sufficient inducement, you shall have a slice of Lady Baltimore."

Not a long note! But you will imagine how genuinely I was touched by
their joint message. I was not an old acquaintance, and I had done
little to help them in their troubles, but I came into the troubles;
with their memory of those days I formed a part, and it was a part which
it warmed me to know they did not dislike to recall. I had actually been
present at their first meeting, that day when John visited the Exchange
to order his wedding-cake, and Eliza had rushed after him, because in
his embarrassment he had forgotten to tell her the date for which he
wanted it. The cake had begun it, the cake had continued it, the cake
had brought them together; and in Eliza's retrospect now I doubted If
she could find the moment when her love for John had awakened; but if
with women there ever is such a moment, then, as I have before said,
it was when the girl behind the counter looked across at the handsome,
blushing boy, and felt stirred to help him in his stumbling attempts to
be businesslike about that cake. If his youth unwittingly kindled hers,
how could he or she help that? But, had he ever once known it and shown
it to her during his period of bondage to Hortense, then, indeed, the
flame would have turned to ice in Eliza's breast. What saved him for
her was his blind steadfastness against her. That was the very thing she
prized most, once it became hers; whereas, any secret swerving toward
her from Hortense during his heavy hours of probation would have
degraded John to nothing in Eliza's eyes. And so, making all this out
by myself in the mountains after reading John's note, I ordered from the
North the handsomest old china cake-dish that Aunt Carola could find
to be sent to Miss Eliza La Heu with my card. I wanted to write on
the card, "Rira bien qui viva le dernier"; but alas! so many pleasant
thoughts may never be said aloud in this world of ours. That I ordered
china, instead of silver, was due to my surmise that in Kings Port--or
at any rate by Mrs. Weguelin and Miss Josephine St. Michael--silver
from any one not of the family would be considered vulgar; it was only a
surmise, and, of course, it was precisely the sort of thing that I could
not verify by asking any of them.

But (you may be asking) how on earth did all this come about? What
happened in Kings Port on the day following that important swim which
Hortense and John took together in the