“I should have told the truth.”

“You would have said there was no Mr. Norman?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly what I did!  And the Captain of course concluded (after having been introduced to Kitty) that Mrs. Norman was a widow.  If I had set him right, what would have become of my daughter’s reputation?  If I had told the truth at this hotel, when everybody wanted to know what Mrs. Norman, that handsome lady, was—­what would the consequences have been to Catherine and her little girl?  No! no!  I have made the best of a miserable situation; I have consulted the tranquillity of a cruelly injured woman and an innocent child—­with this inevitable result; I have been obliged to treat your brother like a character in a novel.  I have ship-wrecked Herbert as the shortest way of answering inconvenient questions.  Vessel found bottom upward in the middle of the Atlantic, and everybody on board drowned, of course.  Worse stories have been printed; I do assure you, worse stories have been printed.”

Randal decided on leaving her.  “Have you done all this with Catherine’s consent?” he asked as he got up from his chair.

“Catherine submits to circumstances, like a sensible woman.”

“Does she submit to your telling Kitty that her father is dead?”

For the first time Mrs. Presty became serious.

“Wait a minute,” she answered.  “Before I consented to answer the child’s inquiries, I came to an understanding with her mother.  I said, ‘Will you let Kitty see her father again?’”

The very question which Randal had promised to ask in his brother’s interests!  “And how did Catherine answer you?” he inquired.

“Honestly.  She said:  ‘I daren’t!’ After that, I had her mother’s authority for telling Kitty that she would never see her father again.  She asked directly if her father was dead—­”

“That will do, Mrs. Presty.  Your defense is thoroughly worthy of your conduct in all other respects.”

“Say thoroughly worthy of the course forced upon me and my daughter by your brother’s infamous conduct—­and you will be nearer the mark!”

Randal passed this over without notice.  “Be so good,” he said, “as to tell Catherine that I try to make every possible allowance for her, but that I cannot consent to sit at her dinner-table, and that I dare not face my poor little niece, after what I have heard.”

Mrs. Presty recovered all her audacity.  “A very wise decision,” she remarked.  “Your sour face would spoil the best dinner that ever was put on the table.  Have you any message for Captain Bennydeck?”

Randal asked if his friend was then at the hotel.

Mrs. Presty smiled significantly.  “Not at the hotel, just now.”

“Where is he?”

“Where he is every day, about this time—­out driving with Catherine and Kitty.”

It was a relief to Randal—­in the present state of Catherine’s relations toward Bennydeck—­to return to London without having seen his friend.