"Nobody but Mr. Vandermarck, I suppose," said Mrs. Throckmorton.
"Not even he," I answered, "for he can't have got my letter yet; it was only mailed the day we started. It was only a chance, you know, our getting those staterooms, and we were in such a hurry. I was so much obliged to that dear, old German gentleman for dying. We shouldn't have been here if he hadn't."
"Pauline, my dear!"
"Well, I can't think, as he's probably in heaven, that he can have begrudged us his tickets to New York."
"I should think not," said Mrs. Throckmorton, with a little sigh. For New York was not heaven to her, and she had spent a good deal of the day in looking up the necessary servants for our establishment, which, little as it was, required just double the number that had made us comfortable abroad.
She had too much discretion to trouble me with her cares, however, so she said cheerfully, after a few moments, by way of diverting my mind and her own--
"Well, I heard some news to-day."
"Ah!"--(I had been unpacking all day; and Mrs. Throckmorton in the interval of servant-hunting had not been able to refrain from a visit or two, en passant to dear friends.)
"Yes: Kilian Vandermarck was married yesterday."
"Yesterday! how odd. And pray, who has he married? Not Mary Leighton, I should hope."