All at once it
flashed upon him that he had better see the doctor, anyway, and find out
whether there were not some last hope in medicine before he took the
desperate step before him. He turned in half his course, and ran into a
lady who had just emerged from the door of the promenade laden with
wraps, and who dropped them all and clutched him to save herself from
falling.
"Why, Mr. March!" she shrieked.
"Miss Triscoe!" he returned, in the astonishment which he shared with her
to the extent of letting the shawls he had knocked from her hold lie
between them till she began to pick them up herself. Then he joined her
and in the relief of their common occupation they contrived to possess
each other of the reason of their presence on, the same boat. She had
sorrowed over Mrs. March's sad state, and he had grieved to hear that her
father was going home because he was not at all well, before they found
the general stretched out in his steamer-chair, and waiting with a grim
impatience for his daughter.
"But how is it you're not in the passenger-list?" he inquired of them
both, and Miss Triscoe explained that they had taken their passage at the
last moment, too late, she supposed, to get into the list.
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