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Catherine refused. "I ought to be near him," she said, hopefully;
"he may wish to see me."

Her mother reminded her that the waiting-room was a public room,
and might be wanted.

"Let's go into the garden," Mrs. Presty proposed. "We can tell
the servant who waits on us where we may be found."

Catherine yielded. Mrs. Presty's excitement found its overflow in
talking perpetually. Her daughter had nothing to say, and cared
nothing where they went; all outward manifestation of life in
her seemed to be suspended at that terrible time of expectation.
They wandered here and there, in the quietest part of the
grounds. Half an hour passed--and no message was received. The
hotel clock struck the hour--and still nothing happened.

"I can walk no longer," Catherine said. She dropped on one of the
garden-chairs, holding by her mother's hand. "Go to him, for
God's sake!" she entreated. "I can endure it no longer."

Mrs. Presty--even bold Mrs. Presty--was afraid to face him again.
"He's fond of the child," she suggested; "let's send Kitty."

Some little girls were at play close by who knew where Kitty was
to be found. In a few minutes more they brought her back with
them. Mrs. Presty gave the child her instructions, and sent her
away proud of her errand, and delighted at the prospect of
visiting the Captain by herself, as if she "was a grown-up lady."

This time the period of suspense was soon at an end. Kitty came
running back. "It's lucky you sent me," she declared. "He
wouldn't have opened the door to anybody else--he said so
himself."

"Did you knock softly, as I told you?" Mrs. Presty asked.

"No, grandmamma, I forgot that. I tried to open the door. He
called out not to disturb him. I said, 'It's only me,' and he
opened the door directly. What makes him look so pale, mamma? Is
he ill?"

"Perhaps he feels the heat," Mrs. Presty suggested, judiciously.

"He said, 'Dear little Kitty,' and he caught me up in his arms
and kissed me. When he sat down again he took me on his knee, and
he asked if I was fond of him, and I said, 'Yes, I am,' and he
kissed me again, and he asked if I had come to stay with him and
keep him company. I forgot what you wanted me to say," Kitty
acknowledged, addressing Mrs. Presty; "so I made it up out of my
own head."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him, mamma was as fond of him as I was, and I said, 'We
will both keep you company.' He put me down on the floor, and he
got up and went to the window and looked out. I told him that
wasn't the way to find her, and I said, 'I know where she is;
I'll go and fetch her.' He's an obstinate man, our nice Captain.
He wouldn't come away from the window. I said, 'You wish to see
mamma, don't you?' And he said 'Yes.' 'You mustn't lock the door
again,' I told him, 'she won't like that'; and what do you think
he said? He said 'Good-by, Kitty!' Wasn't it funny? He didn't
seem to know what he was talking about. If you ask my opinion,
mamma, I think the sooner you go to him the better." Catherine
hesitated. Mrs. Presty on one side, and Kitty on the other, led
her between them into the house.



Chapter LII.


L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose.


Captain Bennydeck met Catherine and her child at the open door of
the room. Mrs. Presty, stopping a few paces behind them, waited
in the passage; eager to see what the Captain's face might tell
her. It told her nothing.

But Catherine saw a change in him. There was something in his
manner unnaturally passive and subdued. It suggested the idea of
a man whose mind had been forced into an effort of self-control
which had exhausted its power, and had allowed the signs of
depression and fatigue to find their way to the surface. The
Captain was quiet, the Captain was kind; neither by word nor look
did he warn Catherine that the continuity of their intimacy was
in danger of being broken--and yet, her spirits sank, when they
met at the open door.

He led her to a chair, and said she had come to him at a time
when he especially wished to speak with her. Kitty asked if she
might remain with them. He put his hand caressingly on her head;
"No, my dear, not now."

The child eyed him for a moment, conscious of something which she
had never noticed in him before, and puzzled by the discovery.
She walked back, cowed and silent, to the door. He followed her
and spoke to Mrs. Presty.

"Take your grandchild into the garden; we will join you there in
a little while. Good-by for the present, Kitty."

Kitty said good-by mechanically--like a dull child repeating a
lesson. Her grandmother led her away in silence.

Bennydeck closed the door and seated himself by Catherine.

"I thank you for your letter," he said. "If such a thing is
possible, it has given me a higher opinion of you than any
opinion that I have held yet."

She looked at him with a feeling of surprise, so sudden and so
overwhelming that she was at a loss how to reply. The last words
which she expected to hear from him, when he alluded to her
confession, were the words that had just passed his lips.

"You have owned to faults that you have committed, and deceptions
that you have sanctioned," he went on--"with nothing to gain, and
everything to lose, by telling the truth. Who but a good woman
would have done that?"

There was a deeper feeling in him than he had ventured to
express. It betrayed itself by a momentary trembling in his
voice. Catherine drew a little closer to him.

"You don't know how you surprise me, how you relieve me," she
said, warmly--and pressed his hand. In the eagerness of her
gratitude, in the gladness that had revived her sinking heart,
she failed to feel that the pressure was not returned.

"What have I said to surprise you?" he asked. "What anxiety have
I relieved, without knowing it?"

"I was afraid you would despise me."

"Why should I despise you?"

"Have I not gained your good opinion under false pretenses? Have
I not allowed you to admire me and to love me without telling you
that there was anything in my past life which I have reason to
regret? Even now, I can hardly realize that you excuse and
forgive me; you, who have read the confession of my worst faults;
you, who know the shocking inconsistencies of my character--"

"Say at once," he answered, "that I know you to be a mortal
creature. Is there any human character, even the noblest, that is
always consistently good?"

"One reads of them sometimes," she suggested, "in books."

"Yes," he said. "In the worst books you could possibly read--the
only really immoral books written in our time."

"Why are they immoral?"

"For this plain reason, that they deliberately pervert the truth.
Clap-trap, you innocent creature, to catch foolish readers! When
do these consistently good people appear in the life around us,
the life that we all see? Never! Are the best mortals that ever
lived above the reach of temptation to do ill, and are they
always too good to yield to it? How does the Lord's Prayer
instruct humanity? It commands us all, without exception, to pray
that we may not be led into temptation. You have been led into
temptation. In other words, you are a human being. All that a
human being could do you have done--you have repented and
confessed. Don't I know how you have suffered and how you have
been tried! Why, what a mean Pharisee I should be if I presumed
to despise you!"

She looked at him proudly and gratefully; she lifted her arm as
if to thank him by an embrace, and suddenly let it drop again at
her side.

"Am I tormenting myself without cause?" she said. "Or is there
something that looks like sorrow, showing itself to me in your
face?"

"You see the bitterest sorrow that I have felt in all my sad
life."

"Is it sorrow for me?"

"No. Sorrow for myself."

"Has it come to you through me? Is it my fault?"

"It is more your misfortune than your fault."

"Then you can feel for me?"

"I can and do."

He had not yet set her at ease.

"I am afraid your sympathy stops somewhere," she said. "Where
does it stop?"

For the first time, he shrank from directly answering her. "I
begin to wish I had followed your example," he owned. "It might
have been better for both of us if I had answered your letter in
writing."

"Tell me plainly," she cried, "is there something you can't
forgive?"

"There is something I can't forget."

"What is it? Oh, what is it! When my mother told poor little
Kitty that her father was dead, are you even more sorry than I am
that I allowed it? Are you even more ashamed of me than I am of
myself?"

"No. I regret that you allowed it; but I understand how you were
led into that error. Your husband's infidelity had shaken his
hold on your respect for him and your sympathy with him, and had
so left you without your natural safeguard against Mrs. Presty's
sophistical reasoning and bad example. But for _that_
wrong-doing, there is a remedy left. Enlighten your child as you
have enlightened me; and then--I have no personal motive for
pleading Mr. Herbert Linley's cause, after what I have seen of
him--and then, acknowledge the father's claim on the child."

"Do you mean his claim to see her?"

"What else can I mean? Yes! let him see her. Do (God help me, now
when it's too late!)--do what you ought to have done, on that
accursed day which will be the blackest day in my calendar, to
the end of my life."

"What day do you mean?"

"The day when you remembered the law of man, and forgot the law
of God; the day when you broke the marriage tie, the sacred tie,
by a Divorce!"

She listened--not conscious now of suspense or fear; she
listened, with her whole heart in revolt against him.

"You are too cruel!" she declared. "You can feel for me, you can
understand me, you can pardon me in everything else that I have
done. But you judge without mercy of the one blameless act of my
life, since my husband left me--the act that protected a mother
in the exercise of her rights. Oh, can it be you? Can it be you?"

"It can be," he said, sighing bitterly; "and it is."

"What horrible delusion possesses you? Why do you curse the happy
day, the blessed day, which saw me safe in the possession of my
child?"

"For the worst and meanest of reasons," he answered--"a selfish
reason. Don't suppose that I have spoken of Divorce as one who
has had occasion to think of it. I have had no occasion to think
of it; I don't think of it even now. I abhor it because it stands
between you and me. I loathe it, I curse it because it separates
us for life."

"Separates us for life? How?"

"Can you ask me?"

"Yes, I do ask you!"

He looked round him. A society of religious persons had visited
the hotel, and had obtained permission to place a copy of the
Bible in every room. One of those copies lay on the chimney-piece
in Catherine's room. Bennydeck brought it to her, and placed it
on the table near which she was sitting. He turned to the New
Testament, and opened it at the Gospel of Saint Matthew. With his
hand on the page, he said:

"I have done my best rightly to understand the duties of a
Christian. One of those duties, as I interpret them, is to let
what I believe show itself in what I do. You have seen enough of
me, I hope, to know (though I have not been forward in speaking
of it) that I am, to the best of my poor ability, a faithful
follower of the teachings of Christ. I dare not set my own
interests and my own happiness above His laws. If I suffer in
obeying them as I suffer now, I must still submit. They are the
laws of my life."

"Is it through me that you suffer?"

"It is through you."

"Will you tell me how?"

He had already found the chapter. His tears dropped on it as he
pointed to the verse.

"Read," he answered, "what the most compassionate of all Teachers
has said, in the Sermon on the Mount."

She read: "Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth
adultery."

Another innocent woman, in her place, might have pointed to that
first part of the verse, which pre-supposes the infidelity of the
divorced wife, and might have asked if those words applied to
_her_. This woman, knowing that she had lost him, knew also what
she owed to herself. She rose in silence, and held out her hand at
parting.

He paused before he took her hand. "Can you forgive me?" he
asked.

She said: "I can pity you."

"Can you look back to the day of your marriage? Can you remember
the words which declared the union between you and your husband
to be separable only by death? Has he treated you with brutal
cruelty?"

"Never!"

"Has he repented of his sin?"

"Yes."

"Ask your own conscience if there is not a worthier life for you
and your child than the life that you are leading now." He
waited, after that appeal to her. The silence remained unbroken.
"Do not mistake me," he resumed gently. "I am not thinking of the
calamity that has fallen on me in a spirit of selfish despair--I
am looking to _your_ future, and I am trying to show you the way
which leads to hope. Catherine! have you no word more to say to
me?"

In faint trembling tones she answered him at last:

"You have left me but one word to say. Farewell!"

He drew her to him gently, and kissed her on the forehead. The
agony in his face was more than she could support; she recoiled
from it in horror. His last act was devoted to the tranquillity
of the one woman whom he had loved. He signed to her to leave
him.


Chapter LIII.


The Largest Nature, the Longest Love.


Mrs. Presty waited in the garden to be joined by her daughter and
Captain Bennydeck, and waited in vain. It was past her
grandchild's bedtime; she decided on returning to the house.

"Suppose we look for them in the sitting-room?" Kitty proposed.

"Suppose we wait a moment, before we go in?" her wise grandmother
advised. "If I hear them talking I shall take you upstairs to
bed."

"Why?"

Mrs. Presty favored Kitty with a hint relating to the management
of inquisitive children which might prove useful to her in
after-life. "When you grow up to be a woman, my dear, beware of
making the mistake that I have just committed. Never be foolish
enough to mention your reasons when a child asks, Why?"

"Was that how they treated _you_, grandmamma, when you were a
child yourself?"

"Of course it was!"

"Why?"

They had reached the sitting-room door by this time. Kitty opened
it without ceremony and looked in. The room was empty.

Having confided her granddaughter to the nursemaid's care, Mrs.
Presty knocked at Catherine's bedroom door. "May I come in?"

"Come in directly! Where is Kitty?"

"Susan is putting her to bed."

"Stop it! Kitty mustn't go to bed. No questions. I'll explain
myself when you come back." There was a wildness in her eyes, and
a tone of stern command in her voice, which warned her mother to
set dignity aside, and submit.

"I don't ask what has happened," Mrs. Presty resumed on her
return. "That letter, that fatal letter to the Captain, has
justified my worst fears. What in Heaven's name are we to do
now?"

"We are to leave this hotel," was the instant reply.

"When?"

"To-night."

"Catherine! do you know what time it is?"

"Time enough to catch the last train to London. Don't raise
objections! If I stay at this place, with associations in every
part of it which remind me of that unhappy man, I shall go mad!
The shock I have suffered, the misery, the humiliation--I tell
you it's more than I can bear. Stay here by yourself if you like;
I mean to go."

She paced with frantic rapidity up and down the room. Mrs. Presty
took the only way by which it was possible to calm her. "Compose
yourself, Catherine, and all that you wish shall be done. I'll
settle everything with the landlord, and give the maid her
orders. Sit down by the open window; let the wind blow over you."

The railway service from Sydenham to London is a late service. At
a few minutes before midnight they were in time for the last
train. When they left the station, Catherine was calm enough to
communicate her plans for the future. The nearest hotel to the
terminus would offer them accommodation for that night. On the
next day they could find some quiet place in the country--no
matter where, so long as they were not disturbed. "Give me rest
and peace, and my mind will be easier," Catherine said. "Let
nobody know where to find me."

These conditions were strictly observed--with an exception in
favor of Mr. Sarrazin. While his client's pecuniary affairs were
still unsettled, the lawyer had his claim to be taken into her
confidence.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next morning found Captain Bennydeck still keeping his rooms
at Sydenham. The state of his mind presented a complete contrast
to the state of Catherine's mind. So far from sharing her
aversion to the personal associations which were connected with
the hotel, he found his one consolation in visiting the scenes
which reminded him of the beloved woman whom he had lost. The
reason for this was not far to seek. His was the largest nature,
and his had been the most devoted love.

As usual, his letters were forwarded to him from his place of
residence in London. Those addressed in handwritings that he knew
were the first that he read. The others he took out with him to
that sequestered part of the garden in which he had passed the
happiest hours of his life by Catherine's side.

He had been thinking of her all the morning; he was thinking of
her now.

His better judgment protested; his accusing conscience warned him
that he was committing, not only an act of folly but (with his
religious convictions) an act of sin--and still she held her
place in his thoughts. The manager had told him of her sudden
departure from the hotel, and had declared with perfect truth
that the place of her destination had not been communicated to
him. Asked if she had left no directions relating to her
correspondence, he had replied that his instructions were to
forward all letters to her lawyer. On the point of inquiring next
for the name and address, Bennydeck's sense of duty and sense of
shame (roused at last) filled him with a timely contempt for
himself. In feeling tempted to write to Catherine--in encouraging
fond thoughts of her among scenes which kept her in his
memory--he had been false to the very principles to which he had
appealed at their farewell interview. She had set him the right
example, the example which he was determined to follow, in
leaving the place. Before he could falter in his resolution, he
gave notice of his departure. The one hope for him now was to
find a refuge from himself in acts of mercy. Consolation was
perhaps waiting for him in his Home.

His unopened correspondence offered a harmless occupation to his
thoughts, in the meanwhile. One after another he read the
letters, with an attention constantly wandering and constantly
recalled, until he opened the last of them that remained. In a
moment more his interest was absorbed. The first sentences in the
letter told him that the deserted creature whom he had met in the
garden--the stranger to whom he had offered help and consolation
in the present and in the future--was no other than the lost girl
of whom he had been so long in search; the daughter of Roderick
Westerfield, once his dearest and oldest friend.

In the pages that followed, the writer confided to him her sad
story; leaving it to her father's friend to decide whether she
was worthy of the sympathy which he had offered to her, when he
thought she was a stranger.

This part of her letter was necessarily a repetition of what
Bennydeck had read, in the confession which Catherine had
addressed to him. That generous woman had been guilty of one, and
but one, concealment of the truth. In relating the circumstances
under which the elopement from Mount Morven had taken place, she
had abstained, in justice to the sincerity of Sydney's
repentance, from mentioning Sydney's name. "Another instance,"
the Captain thought bitterly, as he closed the letter, "of the
virtues which might have made the happiness of my life!"

But he was bound to remember--and he did remember--that there was
now a new interest, tenderly associating itself with his life to
come. The one best way of telling Sydney how dear she was to him
already, for her father's sake, would be to answer her in person.
He hurried away to London by the first train, and drove at once
to Randal's place of abode to ask for Sydney's address.

Wondering what had become of the postscript to his letter, which
had given Bennydeck the information of which he was now in
search, Randal complied with his friend's request, and then
ventured to allude to the report of the Captain's marriage
engagement.

"Am I to congratulate you?" he asked.

"Congratulate me on having discovered Roderick Westerfield's
daughter."

That reply, and the tone in which it was given, led Randal to ask
if the engagement had been prematurely announced.

"There is no engagement at all," Bennydeck answered, with a look
which suggested that it might be wise not to dwell on the
subject.

But the discovery was welcome to Randal, for his brother's sake.
He ran the risk of consequences, and inquired if Catherine was
still to be found at the hotel.

The Captain answered by a sign in the negative.

Randal persisted. "Do you know where she has gone?"

"Nobody knows but her lawyer."

"In that case," Randal concluded, "I shall get the information
that I want." Noticing that Bennydeck looked surprised, he
mentioned his motive. "Herbert is pining to see Kitty," h
continued; "and I mean to help him. He has done all that a man
could do to atone for the past. As things are, I believe I shall
not offend Catherine, if I arrange for a meeting between father
and child. What do you say?"

Bennydeck answered, earnestly and eagerly: "Do it at once!"

They left the house together--one to go to Sydney's lodgings, the
other on his way to Mr. Sarrazin's office.



Chapter LIV.


Let Bygones Be Bygones.


When the servant at the lodgings announced a visitor, and
mentioned his name, Sydney's memory (instead of dwelling on the
recollection of the Captain's kindness) perversely recalled the
letter that she had addressed to him, and reminded her that she
stood in need of indulgence, which even so good a man might
hesitate to grant. Bennydeck's first words told the friendless
girl that her fears had wronged him.

"My dear, how like your father you are! You have his eyes and his
smile; I can't tell you how pleasantly you remind me of my dear
old friend." He took her hand, and kissed her as he might have
kissed a daughter of his own. "Do you remember me at home,
Sydney, when you were a child? No: you must have been too young
for that."

She was deeply touched. In faint trembling tones she said; "I
remember your name; my poor father often spoke of you."

A man who feels true sympathy is never in danger of mistaking his
way to a woman's heart, when that woman has suffered. Bennydeck
consoled, interested, charmed Sydney, by still speaking of the
bygone days at home.

"I well remember how fond your father was of you, and what a
bright little girl you were," the Captain went on. "You have
forgotten, I dare say, the old-fashioned sea-songs that he used
to be so fond of teaching you. It was the strangest and prettiest
contrast, to hear your small piping child's voice singing of
storms and shipwrecks, and thunder and lightning, and reefing
sails in cold and darkness, without the least idea of what it all
meant. Your mother was strict in those days; you never amused her
as you used to amuse your father and me. When she caught you
searching my pockets for sweetmeats, she accused me of destroying
your digestion before you were five years old. I went on spoiling
it, for all that. The last time I saw you, my child, your father
was singing 'The Mariners of England,' and you were on his knee
trying to sing with him. You must have often wondered why you
never saw anything more of me. Did you think I had forgotten
you?"

"I am quite sure I never thought that!"

"You see I was in the Navy at the time," the Captain resumed;
"and we were ordered away to a foreign station. When I got back
to England, miserable news was waiting for me. I heard of your
father's death and of that shameful Trial. Poor fellow! He was as
innocent, Sydney, as you are of the offense which he was accused
of committing. The first thing I did was to set inquiries on foot
after your mother and her children. It was some consolation to me
to feel that I was rich enough to make your lives easy and
agreeable to you. I thought money could do anything. A serious
mistake, my dear--money couldn't find the widow and her children.
We supposed you were somewhere in London; and there, to my great
grief, it ended. From time to time--long afterward, when we
thought we had got the clew in our hands--I continued my
inquiries, still without success. A poor woman and her little
family are so easily engulfed in the big city! Years passed (more
of them than I like to reckon up) before I heard of you at last
by name. The person from whom I got my information told me how
you were employed, and where."

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