“I dare say I do!  You can’t be more astonished than I was, when he presented himself at my hotel and told me what he wanted.  ‘Why, my good fellow, you have just got home,’ I said.  ’Are you weary of your freedom, after only a few hours’ experience of it?’ His answer rather startled me.  He said, ’I am weary of my life, sir.  I have come home and found a trouble to welcome me, which goes near to break my heart.  If I don’t take refuge in absence and hard work, I am a lost man.  Will you give me a refuge?’ That’s what he said, Crayford, word for word.”

“Did you ask him to explain himself further?”

“Not I!  I knew his value, and I took the poor devil on the spot, without pestering him with any more questions.  No need to ask him to explain himself.  The facts speak for themselves in these cases.  The old story, my good friend!  There’s a woman at the bottom of it, of course.”

Mrs. Crayford, waiting for the return of her husband as patiently as she could, was startled by feeling a hand suddenly laid on her shoulder.  She looked round, and confronted Clara.  Her first feeling of surprise changed instantly to alarm.  Clara was trembling from head to foot.

“What is the matter?  What has frightened you, my dear?”

“Lucy!  I have heard of him!”

“Richard Wardour again?”

“Remember what I told you.  I have heard every word of the conversation between Captain Helding and your husband.  A man came to the captain this morning and volunteered to join the Wanderer.  The captain has taken him.  The man is Richard Wardour.”

“You don’t mean it!  Are you sure?  Did you hear Captain Helding mention his name?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it’s Richard Wardour?”

“Don’t ask me!  I am as certain of it, as that I am standing here!  They are going away together, Lucy—­away to the eternal ice and snow.  My foreboding has come true!  The two will meet—­the man who is to marry me and the man whose heart I have broken!”

“Your foreboding has not come true, Clara!  The men have not met here—­the men are not likely to meet elsewhere.  They are appointed to separate ships.  Frank belongs to the Sea-mew, and Wardour to the Wanderer.  See!  Captain Helding has done.  My husband is coming this way.  Let me make sure.  Let me speak to him.”

Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife.  She spoke to him instantly.

“William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the Wanderer?”

“What! you have been listening to the captain and me?”

“I want to know his name?”

“How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each other?”

“His name? has the captain given you his name?”

“Don’t excite yourself, my dear.  Look! you are positively alarming Miss Burnham.  The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to us.  There is his name—­last on the ship’s list.”