t that I should hunt
her up, and propose to do it off-hand.'

'You don't think of it seriously?' said his surprised friend.

'I sometimes think that I would, if it were practicable; simply, as I
say, to recover my sense of being a man of honour.'

'I wish you luck in the enterprise,' said Doctor Bindon. 'You'll soon be
out of that chair, and then you can put your impulse to the test.
But--after twenty years of silence--I should say, don't!'

CHAPTER II

The doctor's advice remained counterpoised, in Millborne's mind, by the
aforesaid mood of seriousness and sense of principle, approximating often
to religious sentiment, which had been evolving itself in his breast for
months, and even years.

The feeling, however, had no immediate effect upon Mr. Millborne's
actions. He soon got over his trifling illness, and was vexed with
himself for having, in a moment of impulse, confided such a case of
conscience to anybody.

But the force which had prompted it, though latent, remained with him and
ultimately grew stronger. The upshot was that about four months after
the date of his illness and disclosure, Millborne found himself on a mild
spring morning at Paddington Station, in a train that was starting for
the west. His many intermittent thoughts on his broken promise from time
to time, in those hours when loneliness brought him face to face with his
own personality, had at last resulted in this course.

The decisive stimulus had been given when, a day or two earlier, on
looking into a Post-Office Directory, he learnt that the woman he had not
met for twenty years was still living on at Exonbury under the name she
had assumed when, a year or two after her disappearance from her native
town and his, she had returned from abroad as a young widow with a child,
and taken up her residence at the former city. Her condition was
apparently but little changed, and her daughter seemed to be with her,
their names standing in the Directory as 'Mrs. Leonora Frankland and Miss
Frankland, Teachers of Music and Dancing.'

Mr. Millborne reached Exonbury in the afternoon, and his first business,
before even taking his luggage into the town, was to find the house
occupied by the teachers. Standing in a central and open place it was
not difficult to discover, a well-burnished brass doorplate bearing their
names prominently. He hesitated to enter without further knowledge, and
ultimately took lodgings over a toyshop opposite,