where
their quarters lay. And when they came out upon that upper deck
Georgiana was dimly conscious that they were a party to attract
attention, even among many people evidently of the same class. Any party
to which Aunt Olivia and Jeannette belonged, she felt, must necessarily
expect to be noticed. Of her own contribution to the party's distinction
she was entirely unaware.

But now that she was actually on shipboard, where during the last
fortnight she had so many times imagined herself, Georgiana found to her
distress that she could not for a moment banish the thought, the image
itself, of that gentle, suffering face at home. Not that she wanted to
forget it--not that; but she did want, now that her decision was made,
to be able to appreciate what a happy occasion it was and how fortunate
the circumstances which had brought about her presence here, the last
place in the world she had expected ever to be in.

She entered the stateroom which she was to share with her cousins, and
was amazed at the size and comfort of it. It was half filled with
flowers and baskets of fruit and other offerings sent for the girls,
with two boxes addressed to herself. Both Stuart and Mr. Jefferson had
sent her flowers. As she examined them a hurried steward appeared with
a third box, which proved to be also for her--a small box, which had
come not from a city florist, like the others, but by mail.

It had been put up by unskilled hands, as its crushed shape and damp
exterior clearly showed. She opened it, wondering, and found a little
bunch of garden flowers, sadly wilted, their limp stems protruding from
the moistened newspaper in which they were wrapped. She searched for a
card, and found it. In a hand she knew well, a little cramped, a little
wavering, but full of character, she read these words: "Blessing her,
praying for her, loving her."

Georgiana's heart gave a great leap of fear. What were those lines, what
the context? She knew them--knew them well. She had never heard her
father quote them, and never read with him the lines from which they
came. Did he know them, use them with intent, not imagining she would
place them? As she well remembered, they were from "Enoch Arden," and
she had spoken them herself, in a dramatized version of that pathetic
poem, the last winter of her college life. And they ran thus:

When you shall see her, tell her that I died
Blessing her, praying for her, loving her.

At the moment she was