And as they drove along the King’s road on this afternoon she suddenly called out, “Look, Frank!”

On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.

“It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila.

“Which is Mr. Ingram?” asked Mrs. Lorraine with considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend.  “Not that little man?”

“Yes,” said Lavender coldly:  he could have wished that Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.

“Won’t you stop and speak to him?” said Sheila with great surprise.

“We are late already,” said her husband.  “But if you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you may.”

Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.

But next morning she said to him, “I suppose you will be riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?”

“I suppose so.”

“I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there,” she said.

“Ladies don’t generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but of course you don’t care for that.”

“I shall not go if you do not wish me.”

“Oh, nonsense!  You may as well go.  What is the use of professing to keep observances that you don’t understand?  And it will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.”

The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out.  How pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend to whom she could talk freely!  The morning seemed to know of her gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in the sunlight.  There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray sky or the leaden plain of the sea.  Sheila knew that the blood was mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house.  She did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel.  She went up the steps, opened the door and entered the square hall.  There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter.  Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room with a cigarette in his hand.  He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her with amazement in his eyes.