"
Rogers wondered if his brain were going. At any rate he felt that he
needed a smoke. Aunt Caroline did not like smoke, so comparative
privacy was assured. Also, a good smoke might show him a way out of
his difficulty.
It didn't. At the end of the second cigar the cold fact, imparted by
the clerk in the steamship office, that Professor Spence and wife
had preceded them upon this very boat, was still a cold fact and
nothing more. The long letter from the bridegroom which would have
made things plain had passed him on his trip across the continent
and was even now lying, with other unopened mail, in his Bainbridge
office.
If Benis were married, then the bride could be no other than the
nurse-secretary he had written about in that one inconsequent letter
to which he, Rogers, had replied with unmistakable warning. But the
thing seemed scarcely credible. If it were a fact, then it might
very easily be a tragedy also. Marriage in such haste and under such
circumstances could scarcely be other than a mistake, and
considering the quality of Benis Spence, a most serious one.
John Rogers was very fond of his eccentric friend and the threatened
disaster loomed almost personal. He felt himself to blame too, for
the advice which had thrown Spence directly from the frying-pan of
Aunt Caroline into the fire of a sterner fate. Add to all this a
keen feeling of unwarranted intrusion and we have some idea of the
state of mind with which Dr.
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