While the younger passengers enjoyed with little care, the older, finding
deeper significance in Nature's wonders, also watched and waited. Before
they had left the Canal, however, Lady Moreham, with Faith's forgotten
envelope in her pocket, sought Captain Hosmer on one of those breathless
evenings when he fretted from inaction, and asked abruptly,
"Captain, do you remember Clara?"
"Your sister? Certainly. She was a little girl when we were young folks
together."
"Yes, but only four years younger, after all, and the dearest child! We
corresponded for years until--my trouble."
The captain eyed her with an amused smile.
"It seems a little strange to hear you call it that!"
"But what else was it? The bitterest trouble!"
"So it seems--yes. But how did you so completely lose sight of your
family?"
"I stopped writing. They had no address. There were only Jane and Clara
left, and Jane was absorbed in her own family. I sometimes think Clara
might have understood and helped me; she was different from the rest and
so fond of me."
"It was a foolish thing to cut yourself off so thoroughly, my friend."
"You don't need to tell me that--but neither can you ever understand how
my pride was wounded, and how mortifying it was, after all my boasts of
the glories in store for us, to have to confess what I was subjected to,
that I might be fit to live among their high-mightinesses!"
"It certainly was hard, but was it right to let them think that, perhaps,
you had become too proud to associate with your own family?"
"Oh, I know, I know, it was a horrid thing to do, and I have been well
punished for it, but I felt, in my resentful shame, that I wanted to fly
from every one who had ever known me.
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