GRAMS

No one ever undertook to argue anything with Ravenel unless invited to
do so, and very few ever got such an invitation. Fannie had not intended
to be left behind. Out of her new care of him she had made her first and
last effort to bend his will to hers, and even while she burned under
the grief and shame of his treatment she would have gone with him at his
beckon though death threatened her at every step.

At any rate so she felt as she came out of her faint and bravely resumed
her care of him, retaining it even when the doctor declared she had a
fever and ought to be in bed. But she felt also that Jeff-Jack knew he
had only to beckon; and when he did not do so, either by hand or tone,
she saved herself the idle torture of asking him to take a sick bride on
a journey from which a sick bride could not deter him.

Yet she made one mistake, when she took at its face value the equal
absence of fondness and resentment with which the bridegroom had behaved
throughout. It was easy enough to read John March's deep indignation
under the surface of his courteous silences; but neither she nor John
guessed that the bridegroom's only reason for not being vexed with both
of them was that he was not of the sort to let himself be vexed. Each
had disappointed him seriously; Fannie by setting up domestic love and
felicity as a purpose instead of an appliance, squandering her care and
strength in a short-sighted devotion to his physical needs, and showing
herself unfit to co-operate with him in the things for which he thought
it no great matter to risk his life; and John by failing so utterly to
discern the true situation in Suez that the only thing to do with him
was to let him alone until time and hard luck might season him to better
uses than anyone could make of him yet.

If Ravenel were going to allow himself the luxury of either vexation or
chagrin, he had far more profound occasion in quite another person.
Probably never before in their acquaintance had he been so displeased
with Garnet. Some hours before he rose to dress for the train he had
filled out two telegraph blanks. The contents of the first he read to
Fannie and with her approval sent it to her father by wire. It read:

"Have been sick. Much better now. Fannie tired out, nursing. Wants
Johanna. Send her in care Southern Express Company.

R."

He did not read to her the second missive. But when he had made it
ready--for the mail, not the tel