Catherine was amused; Mrs. Presty burst out laughing; the Captain's dry humor asserted itself as quaintly as ever. "This is no laughing matter," he resumed, looking at Catherine. "My vessel is a small one. For two nights the awful music of my friend's nose kept me sleepless. When I woke him, and said, 'Don't snore,' he apologized in the sweetest manner, and bega n again. On the third day I anchored in the bay here, determined to get a night's rest on shore. A dispute about the price of these rooms offered them to me. I sent a note of apology on board--and slept peacefully. The next morning, my sailing master informed me that there had been what he called 'a little swell in the night.' He reported the sounds made by my friend on this occasion to have been the awful sounds of seasickness. 'The gentleman left the yacht, sir, the first thing this morning,' he said; 'and he's gone home by railway.' On the day when you happened to arrive, my cabin was my own again; and I can honestly thank you for relieving me of my rooms. Do you make a long stay, Mrs. Norman?"
Catherine answered that they were going to London by the next train. Seeing Randal's card still unnoticed on the table, she handed it to the Captain.
"Is Mr. Linley an old friend of yours?" he asked, as he took the card.
Mrs. Presty hastened to answer in the affirmative for her daughter. It was plain that Randal had discreetly abstained from mentioning his true connection with them. Would he preserve the same silence if the Captain spoke of his visit to Mrs. Norman, when he and his friend met next? Mrs. Presty's mind might have been at ease on that subject, if she had known how to appreciate Randal's character and Randal's motives. The same keen sense of the family disgrace, which had led him to conceal from Captain Bennydeck his brother's illicit relations with Sydney Westerfield, had compelled him to keep secret his former association, as brother-in-law, with the divorced wife. Her change of name had hitherto protected her from discovery by the Captain, and would in all probability continue to protect her in the future. The good Bennydeck had been enjoying himself at sea when the Divorce was granted, and when the newspapers reported the proceedings. He rarely went to his club, and he never associated with persons of either *** to whom gossip and scandal are as the breath of their lives. Ignorant of these circumstances, and remembering what had happened on that day, Mrs. Presty looked at him with some anxiety on her daughter's account, while he was reading the message on Randal's card. There was little to see. His fine face expressed a quiet sorrow, and he sighed as he put the card back in his pocket.
An interval of silence followed. Captain Bennydeck was thinking over the message which he had just read. Catherine and her mother were looking at him with the same interest, inspired by very different motives. The interview so pleasantly begun was in some danger of lapsing into formality and embarrassment, when a new personage appeared on the scene.
Kitty had returned in triumph from her ride. "Mamma! the donkey did more than gallop--he kicked, and I fell off. Oh, I'm not hurt!" cried the child, seeing the alarm in her mother's face.
"Tumbling off is such a funny sensation. It isn't as if you fell on the ground; it's as if the ground came up to _you_ and said--Bump!" She had got as far as that, when the progress of her narrative was suspended by the discovery of a strange gentleman in the room.
The smile that brightened the captain's face, when Kitty opened the door, answered for him as a man who loved children. "Your little girl, Mrs. Norman?" he said.
"Yes."
(A common question and a common reply. Nothing worth noticing, in either the one or the other, at the time--and yet they proved to be important enough to turn Catherine's life into a new course.)
In the meanwhile, Kitty had been whispering to her mother. She wanted to know the strange gentleman's name. The Captain heard her. "My name is Bennydeck," he said; "will you come to me?"
Kitty had heard the name mentioned in connection with a yacht.
Like all children, she knew a friend the moment she looked at him. "I've seen your pretty boat, sir," she said, crossing the room to Captain Bennydeck. "Is it very nice when you go sailing?"
"If you were not going back to London, my dear, I should ask your mamma to let me take you sailing with me. Perhaps we shall have another opportunity."
The Captain's answer delighted Kitty. "Oh, yes, tomorrow or next day!" she suggested. "Do you know where to find me in London?
Mamma, where do I live, when I am in London?" Before her mother could answer, she hit on a new idea. "Don't tell me; I'll find it for myself. It's on grandmamma's boxes, and they're in the passage."