observed the address in looking over the
papers in my valise this morning." He handed her a telegram. "I trust
that it is nothing requiring immediate attention."

Clementina read it at a glance. "No," she answered, and for a while she
could not say anything more; it was a cable message which Hinkle's sister
must have sent her after writing. No evil had come of its failure to
reach her, and she recalled without bitterness the suffering which would
have been spared her if she had got it before. It was when she thought of
the suffering of her lover from the silence which must have made him
doubt her, that she could not speak. As soon as she governed herself
against her first resentment she said, with a little sigh, "It is all
right, now, Mr. Osson," and her stress upon the word seemed to trouble
him with no misgiving. "Besides, if you're to blame for not noticing, so
is Mr. Bennam, and I don't want to blame any one." She hesitated a moment
before she added: "I have got to tell you something, now, because I think
you ought to know it. I am going home to be married, Mr. Osson, and this
message is from the gentleman I am going to be married to. He has been
very sick, and I don't know yet as he'll be able to meet me in New Yo'k;
but his fatha will."

Mr. Orson showed no interest in these facts beyond a silent attention to
her words, which might have passed for an open indifference. At his time
of life all such questions, which are of permanent importance to women,
affect men hardly more than the angels who neither marry nor are given in
marriage. Besides, as a minister he must have had a surfeit of all
possible qualities in the love affairs of people intending matrimony. As
a casuist he was more reasonably concerned in the next fact which
Clementina laid before him.

"And the otha day, there in Venice when you we'e sick, and you seemed to
think that I might put off stahting home till the next steamer, I don't
know but I let you believe I would."

"I supposed that the delay of a week or two could make no material
difference to you."

"But now you see that it would. And I feel as if I ought to tell you--I
spoke to Mr. Bennam about it, and he didn't tell me not to--that I
shouldn't have staid, no not for anything in the wo'ld. I had to do what
I did at the time, but eva since it has seemed as if I had deceived you,
and I don't want to have it seem so any longer. It isn't because I don't
hate to tell you; I do; but I guess if