“Twice I have approached the house in which you are living; and twice my courage has failed me.  I have gone away again—­I have walked, I don’t know where, I don’t know how far.  Shame and fear seemed to be insensible to fatigue.  This is my third attempt.  If I was a little nearer to you, I think you would see what the effort has cost me.  I have not much to say.  May I ask you to hear me?”

“You have taken me by surprise, Miss Westerfield.  You have no right to do that; I refuse to hear you.”

“Try, madam, to bear in mind that no unhappy creature, in my place, would expose herself to your anger and contempt without a serious reason.  Will you think again?”

“No!”

Sydney turned to go away—­and suddenly stopped.

Another person was advancing from the hotel; an interruption, a trivial domestic interruption, presented itself.  The nursemaid had missed the child, and had come into the garden to see if she was with her mother.

“Where is Miss Kitty, ma’am?” the girl asked.

Her mistress told her what had happened, and sent her to the Palace to relieve Captain Bennydeck of the charge that he had undertaken.  Susan listened, looking at Sydney and recognizing the familiar face.  As the girl moved away, Sydney spoke to her.

“I hope little Kitty is well and happy?”

The mother does not live who could have resisted the tone in which that question was put.  The broken heart, the love for the child that still lived in it, spoke in accents that even touched the servant.  She came back; remembering the happy days when the governess had won their hearts at Mount Morven, and, for a moment at least, remembering nothing else.

“Quite well and happy, miss, thank you,” Susan said.

As she hurried away on her errand, she saw her mistress beckon to Sydney to return, and place a chair for her.  The nursemaid was not near enough to hear what followed.

“Miss Westerfield, will you forget what I said just now?” With those words, Catherine pointed to the chair.  “I am ready to hear you,” she resumed—­“but I have something to ask first.  Does what you wish to say to me relate only to yourself?”

“It relates to another person, as well as to myself.”

That reply, and the inference to which it led, tried Catherine’s resolution to preserve her self-control, as nothing had tried it yet.

“If that other person,” she began, “means Mr. Herbert Linley—­”

Sydney interrupted her, in words which she was entirely unprepared to hear.

“I shall never see Mr. Herbert Linley again.”

“Has he deserted you?”

“No.  It is I who have left him.”

“You!”

The emphasis laid on that one word forced Sydney to assert herself for the first time.

“If I had not left him of my own free will,” she said, “what else would excuse me for venturing to come here?”