think that, if it were the
widow, the encounter was accidental. She remembered that the widow in
her restlessness was often visiting the village near Southampton, which
was her original home, and it was possible that she chose water-transit
with the idea of saving expense.

'What is the matter, Elfride?' Knight inquired, standing before her.

'Nothing more than that I am rather depressed.'

'I don't much wonder at it; that wharf was depressing. We seemed
underneath and inferior to everything around us. But we shall be in the
sea breeze again soon, and that will freshen you, dear.'

The evening closed in and dusk increased as they made way down
Southampton Water and through the Solent. Elfride's disturbance of mind
was such that her light spirits of the foregoing four and twenty hours
had entirely deserted her. The weather too had grown more gloomy, for
though the showers of the morning had ceased, the sky was covered more
closely than ever with dense leaden clouds. How beautiful was the sunset
when they rounded the North Foreland the previous evening! now it was
impossible to tell within half an hour the time of the luminary's going
down. Knight led her about, and being by this time accustomed to her
sudden changes of mood, overlooked the necessity of a cause in regarding
the conditions--impressionableness and elasticity.

Elfride looked stealthily to the other end of the vessel. Mrs. Jethway,
or her double, was sitting at the stern--her eye steadily regarding
Elfride.

'Let us go to the forepart,' she said quickly to Knight. 'See there--the
man is fixing the lights for the night.'

Knight assented, and after watching the operation of fixing the red and
the green lights on the port and starboard bows, and the hoisting of
the white light to the masthead, he walked up and down with her till
the increase of wind rendered promenading difficult. Elfride's eyes were
occasionally to be found furtively gazing abaft, to learn if her enemy
were really there. Nobody was visible now.

'Shall we go below?' said Knight, seeing that the deck was nearly
deserted.

'No,' she said. 'If you will kindly get me a rug from Mrs. Swancourt, I
should like, if you don't mind, to stay here.' She had recently fancied
the assumed Mrs. Jethway might be a first-class passenger, and dreaded
meeting her by accident.

Knight appeared with the rug, and they sat down behind a weather-cloth
on the windward side, just as the two red eyes of the