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 on her cheeks.  She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the King’s road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the beach.  She stopped and watched some men putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long after the boat was launched.  She would not confess to herself that she felt lonely and miserable:  it was the sight of the sea that was melancholy.  It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging and rushing before a south-west wind.  Here this sea looked vast and calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva.  She walked on, in a blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade, and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.