clear to me."

"Why, don't you see: he met this woman on the boat and engaged with her
in some desperate enterprise to save her father. He left the trunk at
Uncle David's--"

"Yes, but why didn't he give a name or an address with the trunk?"

"I suppose he was so beside himself that he hardly knew what he was
doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the
rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have
suffered! Didn't you think him very handsome, Stella?"

"Yes, very: he looked like the Corsair."

"Do you suppose he will ever get over it?"

"Get over what?"

"Poor Florine's death."

"Oh, never!" said I emphatically.

Lilly sighed a little, and said that she thought Vera ought never to
marry, but to devote her life to consoling Clement for all he had
suffered.

If Mrs. Long had thought us abstracted before, I don't know what she
thought now. We scarcely spoke unless she addressed us, and then we made
answers as wide of the mark as a boy's first shots. Only once Lilly
roused to interest: Mrs. Long was speaking of the old French families of
New Orleans, and Lilly said, "Oh, Mrs. Long, did you ever hear of the
Gardines?"

"Yes, indeed," said the lady: "they're one of the oldest and best
families. Vera Gardine is quite a belle in society, and Clement is a
fine young man. He does not fritter away his time, as so many young men
do, but works away like a good fellow at his plantation up on the Bayou
Teche."

Lilly and I stole a look at each other. How we should have electrified
good Mrs. Long had we told her all we knew about poor Clement Gardine!

We went back to Galveston, feeling that a whole world of experience had
opened to us since we left it. We were not the same girls, and never
could be again. Lilly flew into a passion when she found Uncle David
wearing one of "C. G.'s" sacred shirts, and insisted that they should be
done up at once in a parcel ready to send to Miss Gardine.

"I am determined to have them both come over and make us a visit," she
said confidentially to me.

We had not been forbidden to tell the story at home, but while Aunt
Nanny and Maum' Hepsey listened very sympathetically. Uncle David
laughed a good deal, and said, "She's going to write to you, is she?
Well, show me the letter when it comes."

We waited long for that letter, and at last it came; and when we had
read it we knew exactly how a man might feel upon whom a rock fell out
of