nonsense!" he said. "You will have people fancying you are only a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pocket or throw stones at you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian: now do, like a good girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It won't hurt you much."
So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress, and he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.
Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet of this still summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds were drawn and candles lit, and still their conversation murmured around her unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the beach.
"Mayn't we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?" said Sheila.
"You couldn't go out walking at this time of night," said Mrs. Kavanagh in a kindly way: "you would meet the most unpleasant persons. Besides, going out into the night air would be most dangerous."
"It is a beautiful night," said Sheila with a sigh. She was still standing at the window.
"Come," said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and putting her hand in her arm, "we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we can do to amuse you."
"Oh, but I don't want to be amused!" cried Sheila almost in terror, for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. "I would much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it is very kind of you," she hastily added, fancying that her speech had been somewhat ungracious—"it is very kind of you indeed."
"Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn't I?"
"Yes," said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked to the table and sat down.
Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He went over to her and sat down by the piano.
"Here," she said, "I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a second to me: how can one learn without practicing? And there are some of those duets I really should like to learn after what you said of them."
"Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?" he said.
"And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must have left you in a very amiable mood."
"Well, suppose we try," he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll of music which she had brought down.
"Which shall we take first?" he asked.
"It does not much matter," she answered indifferently, and indeed she took up one of the duets by haphazard.
What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh's companion suddenly lift her eyes from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets, and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no great power—
Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
and it was she to whom the answer was given—
He in thy snowy bosom strays;
and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard them sing together—
He makes thy rosy lips his care,
And walks the mazes of thy hair.
She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practicing these duets—her duets—with some one else. For presently they sang "When the rosy morn appearing," and "I would that my love could silently," and others, all of them in Sheila's eyes, sacred to the time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room at Borva. It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these things. It was not as a music-master that he sang with her. He put as much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that this woman should have taken Sheila's own duets from her to sing before her with her own husband.
Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and Lavender had just discovered another duet which they felt bound to try together as the last.
This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained by her husband's attentions to this young American lady; and yet she would not admit to herself that he was any way in the wrong. She would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural than that Frank should recommend to any friend the duets of which he was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them? and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.
But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all her resolves.
"Sheila," said her husband, I don't think I ever asked you whether you rode."
"I used to ride many times at home," she said.
"But I suppose you'd rather not ride here," he said. "Mrs. Lorraine and I propose to go out presently: you'll be able to amuse yourself somehow till we come back."
Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her mother was with her.
"I suppose I may go out," said Sheila. "It is so very dull in-doors, and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and she is not going out."
"Well, there's no harm in your going out," answered Lavender, "but I should have thought you'd have liked the comfort of watching the people pass, from the window."
She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out. Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her husband and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down stairs without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.
It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight