“My dear, how like your father you are!  You have his eyes and his smile; I can’t tell you how pleasantly you remind me of my dear old friend.”  He took her hand, and kissed her as he might have kissed a daughter of his own.  “Do you remember me at home, Sydney, when you were a child?  No:  you must have been too young for that.”

She was deeply touched.  In faint trembling tones she said; “I remember your name; my poor father often spoke of you.”

A man who feels true sympathy is never in danger of mistaking his way to a woman’s heart, when that woman has suffered.  Bennydeck consoled, interested, charmed Sydney, by still speaking of the bygone days at home.

“I well remember how fond your father was of you, and what a bright little girl you were,” the Captain went on.  “You have forgotten, I dare say, the old-fashioned sea-songs that he used to be so fond of teaching you.  It was the strangest and prettiest contrast, to hear your small piping child’s voice singing of storms and shipwrecks, and thunder and lightning, and reefing sails in cold and darkness, without the least idea of what it all meant.  Your mother was strict in those days; you never amused her as you used to amuse your father and me.  When she caught you searching my pockets for sweetmeats, she accused me of destroying your digestion before you were five years old.  I went on spoiling it, for all that.  The last time I saw you, my child, your father was singing ‘The Mariners of England,’ and you were on his knee trying to sing with him.  You must have often wondered why you never saw anything more of me.  Did you think I had forgotten you?”

“I am quite sure I never thought that!”

“You see I was in the Navy at the time,” the Captain resumed; “and we were ordered away to a foreign station.  When I got back to England, miserable news was waiting for me.  I heard of your father’s death and of that shameful Trial.  Poor fellow!  He was as innocent, Sydney, as you are of the offense which he was accused of committing.  The first thing I did was to set inquiries on foot after your mother and her children.  It was some consolation to me to feel that I was rich enough to make your lives easy and agreeable to you.  I thought money could do anything.  A serious mistake, my dear—­money couldn’t find the widow and her children.  We supposed you were somewhere in London; and there, to my great grief, it ended.  From time to time—­long afterward, when we thought we had got the clew in our hands—­I continued my inquiries, still without success.  A poor woman and her little family are so easily engulfed in the big city!  Years passed (more of them than I like to reckon up) before I heard of you at last by name.  The person from whom I got my information told me how you were employed, and where.”

“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, who could the person have been?”

“A poor old broken-down actor, Sydney.  You were his favorite pupil.  Do you remember him?”