On the last day of his visit they
decided to venture on a two hours' sail in one of the small yachts which
lay there for hire. The trip had not progressed far before all, except
the curate, found that sailing in a breeze did not quite agree with them;
but as he seemed to enjoy the experience, the other three bore their
condition as well as they could without grimace or complaint, till the
young man, observing their discomfort, gave immediate directions to tack
about. On the way back to port they sat silent, facing each other.

Nausea in such circumstances, like midnight watching, fatigue, trouble,
fright, has this marked effect upon the countenance, that it often brings
out strongly the divergences of the individual from the norm of his race,
accentuating superficial peculiarities to radical distinctions.
Unexpected physiognomies will uncover themselves at these times in well-
known faces; the aspect becomes invested with the spectral presence of
entombed and forgotten ancestors; and family lineaments of special or
exclusive cast, which in ordinary moments are masked by a stereotyped
expression and mien, start up with crude insistence to the view.

Frances, sitting beside her mother's husband, with Mr. Cope opposite, was
naturally enough much regarded by the curate during the tedious sail
home; at first with sympathetic smiles. Then, as the middle-aged father
and his child grew each gray-faced, as the pretty blush of Frances
disintegrated into spotty stains, and the soft rotundities of her
features diverged from their familiar and reposeful beauty into elemental
lines, Cope was gradually struck with the resemblance between a pair in
their discomfort who in their ease presented nothing to the eye in
common. Mr. Millborne and Frances in their indisposition were strangely,
startlingly alike.

The inexplicable fact absorbed Cope's attention quite. He forgot to
smile at Frances, to hold her hand; and when they touched the shore he
remained sitting for some moments like a man in a trance.

As they went homeward, and recovered their complexions and contours, the
similarities one by one disappeared, and Frances and Mr. Millborne were
again masked by the commonplace differences of sex and age. It was as
if, during the voyage, a mysterious veil had been lifted, temporarily
revealing a strange pantomime of the past.

During the evening he said to her casually: 'Is your step-father a cousin
of your mother, dear Frances?'