rove to be
equally a relief on both sides. He was on his way to the hotel when he
met with Sydney Westerfield.

To see a woman in the sorest need of all that kindness and consideration
could offer, and to leave her as helpless as he had found her, would
have been an act of brutal indifference revolting to any man possessed
of even ordinary sensibility. The Captain had only followed his natural
impulses, and had only said and done what, in nearly similar cases, he
had said and done on other occasions.

Left by himself, he advanced a few steps mechanically on the way by
which Sydney had escaped him--and then stopped. Was there any sufficient
reason for his following her, and intruding himself on her notice?
She had recovered, she was in possession of his address, she had been
referred to a person who could answer for his good intentions; all that
it was his duty to do, had been done already. He turned back again, in
the direction of the hotel.

Hesitating once more, he paused half-way along the corridor which led
to Catherine's sitting-room. Voices reached him from persons who had
entered the house by the front door. He recognized Mrs. Presty's loud
confident tones. She was taking leave of friends, and was standing with
her back toward him. Bennydeck waited, unobserved, until he saw her
enter the sitting-room. No such explanation as he was in search of could
possibly take place in the presence of Catherine's mother. He returned
to the garden.

Mrs. Presty was in high spirits. She had enjoyed the Festival; she had
taken the lead among the friends who accompanied her to the Palace; she
had ordered everything, and paid for nothing, at that worst of all bad
public dinners in England, the dinner which pretends to be French. In a
buoyant frame of mind, ready for more enjoyment if she could only
find it, what did she see on opening the sitting-room door? To use the
expressive language of the stage, Catherine was "discovered alone"--with
her elbows on the table, and her face hidden in her hands--the picture
of despair.

Mrs. Presty surveyed the spectacle before her with righteous indignation
visible in every line of her face. The arrangement which bound her
daughter to give Bennydeck his final reply on that day had been well
known to her when she left the hotel in the morning. The conclusion
at which she arrived, on returning at night, was expressed with Roman
brevity and Roman eloquence in four words:

"Oh, the poor Capt