The yellower gleams grew narrower; the evening shadows broader, and Philip crept down the lane a weary, woeful man.  At every gap in the close-packed buildings he heard the merry music of a band, the cheerful sound of excited voices.  Still he descended slowly, scarcely wondering what it could be, for it was not associated in his mind with the one pervading thought of Sylvia.

When he came to the angle of junction between the lane and the High Street, he seemed plunged all at once into the very centre of the bustle, and he drew himself up into a corner of deep shadow, from whence he could look out upon the street.

A circus was making its grand entry into Monkshaven, with all the pomp of colour and of noise that it could muster.  Trumpeters in parti-coloured clothes rode first, blaring out triumphant discord.  Next came a gold-and-scarlet chariot drawn by six piebald horses, and the windings of this team through the tortuous narrow street were pretty enough to look upon.  In the chariot sate kings and queens, heroes and heroines, or what were meant for such; all the little boys and girls running alongside of the chariot envied them; but they themselves were very much tired, and shivering with cold in their heroic pomp of classic clothing.  All this Philip might have seen; did see, in fact; but heeded not one jot.  Almost opposite to him, not ten yards apart, standing on the raised step at the well-known shop door, was Sylvia, holding a child, a merry dancing child, up in her arms to see the show.  She too, Sylvia, was laughing for pleasure, and for sympathy with pleasure.  She held the little Bella aloft that the child might see the gaudy procession the better and the longer, looking at it herself with red lips apart and white teeth glancing through; then she turned to speak to some one behind her—­Coulson, as Philip saw the moment afterwards; his answer made her laugh once again.  Philip saw it all; her bonny careless looks, her pretty matronly form, her evident ease of mind and prosperous outward circumstances.  The years that he had spent in gloomy sorrow, amongst wild scenes, on land or by sea, his life in frequent peril of a bloody end, had gone by with her like sunny days; all the more sunny because he was not there.  So bitterly thought the poor disabled marine, as, weary and despairing, he stood in the cold shadow and looked upon the home that should have been his haven, the wife that should have welcomed him, the child that should have been his comfort.  He had banished himself from his home; his wife had forsworn him; his child was blossoming into intelligence unwitting of any father.  Wife, and child, and home, were all doing well without him; what madness had tempted him thither? an hour ago, like a fanciful fool, he had thought she might be dead—­dead with sad penitence for her cruel words at her heart—­with mournful wonder at the unaccounted-for absence of her child’s father preying on her spirits, and in some measure causing the death he had apprehended.  But to look at her there where she stood, it did not seem as if she had had an hour’s painful thought in all her blooming life.