"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa always looked so decidedly queer whenever your name was mentioned.
"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed that in due time you would come back to me.
"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her answer."
Pinned fast to the end of Fanny's letter, so that by no chance should I read it first, were these words in my darling's hand:
"Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be traveling about so much that you need not write me the progress of your romance, but believe me I shall be most interested in its conclusion. BESSIE S."
It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited, had given her leave "to try."
CHAPTER IX.
But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D—— must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no longer.
No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."