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.”