“What did you tell him?”

“I told him, mamma was as fond of him as I was, and I said, ’We will both keep you company.’  He put me down on the floor, and he got up and went to the window and looked out.  I told him that wasn’t the way to find her, and I said, ’I know where she is; I’ll go and fetch her.’  He’s an obstinate man, our nice Captain.  He wouldn’t come away from the window.  I said, ’You wish to see mamma, don’t you?’ And he said ‘Yes.’  ’You mustn’t lock the door again,’ I told him, ‘she won’t like that’; and what do you think he said?  He said ‘Good-by, Kitty!’ Wasn’t it funny?  He didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.  If you ask my opinion, mamma, I think the sooner you go to him the better.”  Catherine hesitated.  Mrs. Presty on one side, and Kitty on the other, led her between them into the house.

Chapter LII.

L’homme propose, et Dieu dispose.

Captain Bennydeck met Catherine and her child at the open door of the room.  Mrs. Presty, stopping a few paces behind them, waited in the passage; eager to see what the Captain’s face might tell her.  It told her nothing.

But Catherine saw a change in him.  There was something in his manner unnaturally passive and subdued.  It suggested the idea of a man whose mind had been forced into an effort of self-control which had exhausted its power, and had allowed the signs of depression and fatigue to find their way to the surface.  The Captain was quiet, the Captain was kind; neither by word nor look did he warn Catherine that the continuity of their intimacy was in danger of being broken—­and yet, her spirits sank, when they met at the open door.

He led her to a chair, and said she had come to him at a time when he especially wished to speak with her.  Kitty asked if she might remain with them.  He put his hand caressingly on her head; “No, my dear, not now.”

The child eyed him for a moment, conscious of something which she had never noticed in him before, and puzzled by the discovery.  She walked back, cowed and silent, to the door.  He followed her and spoke to Mrs. Presty.

“Take your grandchild into the garden; we will join you there in a little while.  Good-by for the present, Kitty.”

Kitty said good-by mechanically—­like a dull child repeating a lesson.  Her grandmother led her away in silence.

Bennydeck closed the door and seated himself by Catherine.

“I thank you for your letter,” he said.  “If such a thing is possible, it has given me a higher opinion of you than any opinion that I have held yet.”

She looked at him with a feeling of surprise, so sudden and so overwhelming that she was at a loss how to reply.  The last words which she expected to hear from him, when he alluded to her confession, were the words that had just passed his lips.

“You have owned to faults that you have committed, and deceptions that you have sanctioned,” he went on—­“with nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by telling the truth.  Who but a good woman would have done that?”