“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said; “the lady and gentleman who have taken these rooms have just arrived.”

Mrs. Presty got up in a hurry, and cordially shook hands with the Captain.  Looking round, she took up the railway guide and her knitting left on the table.  Was there anything else left about?  There was nothing to be seen.  Mrs. Presty crossed the passage to her daughter’s bedroom, to hurry the packing.  Captain Bennydeck went downstairs, on his way back to the yacht.

In the hall of the hotel he passed the lady and gentleman—­and, of course, noticed the lady.  She was little and dark and would have been pretty, if she had not looked ill and out of spirits.  What would he have said, what would he have done, if he had known that those two strangers were Randal Linley’s brother and Roderick Westerfield’s daughter?

Chapter XXXVI

Mr. and Mrs. Herbert.

The stealthy influence of distrust fastens its hold on the mind by slow degrees.  Little by little it reaches its fatal end, and disguises delusion successfully under the garb of truth.

Day after day, the false conviction grew on Sydney’s mind that Herbert Linley was comparing the life he led now with the happier life which he remembered at Mount Morven.  Day after day, her unreasoning fear contemplated the time when Herbert Linley would leave her friendless, in the world that had no place in it for women like herself.  Delusion—­fatal delusion that looked like truth!  Morally weak as he might be, the man whom she feared to trust had not yet entirely lost the sense which birth and breeding had firmly fastened in him—­the sense of honor.  Acting under that influence, he was (if the expression may be permitted) consistent even in inconsistency.  With equal sincerity of feeling, he reproached himself for his infidelity toward the woman whom he had deserted, and devoted himself to his duty toward the woman whom he had misled.  In Sydney’s presence—­suffer as he might under the struggle to maintain his resolution when he was alone—­he kept his intercourse with her studiously gentle in manner, and considerate in language; his conduct offered assurances for the future which she could only see through the falsifying medium of her own distrust.

In the delusion that now possessed her she read, over and over again, the letter which Captain Bennydeck had addressed to her father; she saw, more and more clearly, the circumstances which associated her situation with the situation of the poor girl who had closed her wasted life among the nuns in a French convent.

Two results followed on this state of things.

When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go, on leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had heard of, and felt some curiosity to see.  The same day—­bent on pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad—­he wrote to engage rooms at the hotel.