He was not so rich that he could throw six hundred dollars away, but there might be worse things; and he walked up and down thinking.

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.