_ drew up to her landing at
Montreal, when Miss Bentley (we had learned her name) came to us from
the point where she was standing with Glendenning and said that now she
must go to her mother, and took a sweet leave of my wife. She asked
where we were going to stay in Montreal and whether we were going on to
Quebec; and said her mother would wish to send Mrs. March her card.

When she was gone, Glendenning explained, with rather superfluous
apology, that he had offered to see the ladies to a hotel, for he was
afraid that at this crowded season they might not find it easy to get
rooms, and he did not wish Mrs. Bentley, who was an invalid, to have any
anxieties about it. He bade us an affectionate, but not a disconsolate
adieu, and when we had got into the modest conveyance (if an omnibus is
modest) which was to take us to the Ottawa House, we saw him drive off
to the St. Lawrence Hall (it was twenty-five years ago) in one of those
vitreous and tinkling Montreal landaus, with Mrs. and Miss Bentley and
Mrs. Bentley's maid.

We were still so young as to be very much absorbed in the love affairs
of other people; I believe women always remain young enough for that;
and Mrs. March talked about the one we fancied we had witnessed the
beginning of pretty much the whole evening. The next morning we got
letters from Boston, telling us how the children were and all that they
were doing and saying. We had stood it very well, as long as we did not
hear anything about them, and we had lent ourselves in a sort of
semi-forgetfulness of them to the associations of the past when they
were not; but now to learn that they were hearty and happy, and that
they sent love and kisses, was too much. With one mind we renounced the
notion of going on to Quebec; we found that we could just get the
ten-o'clock train that would reach Boston by eleven that night, and we
made all haste and got it. We had not been really at peace, we
perceived, till that moment since we had bidden the children good-bye.

IV.

Perhaps it was because we left Montreal so abruptly that Mrs. March
never received Mrs. Bentley's card. It may be at the Ottawa House to
this day, for all I know. What is certain is that we saw and heard
nothing more of her or her daughter. Glendenning called to see us as he
passed through Boston on his way west from Quebec, but we were neither
of us at home and we missed him, to my wife's vivid regret. I rather
think we expected him to find s