She got him some weak brandy and water, and she noticed as he drank it how his hand shook.
Then she stole up to her own room and began to pack, mechanically, like one in a dream.
Gradually she began to realize that after all it was better perhaps that they should leave Portmaris. Yorke—the mere passing of his name across her mind caused her a pang—might come down after her when he found that she had not gone to London and sent him her address, and she felt that a meeting with him would nearly kill her. At all costs that must be avoided. In her heart throbbed only one prayer; that, while life lasted, she might be spared the agony of seeing his face, hearing his voice again.
She finished her preparations for herself and her father, and went downstairs and helped him pack the absurd and worthless canvases; then she went out to say good-by to the old place.
Something, a presentment as strong as certainty, told her that she was indeed saying good-by and not adieu.
She wandered along the quay and stood looking sadly at the breakwater against which she had sat when Ralph Duncombe had declared his love and given her his ring; on which Yorke had been lying the night she and he had gone for a sail. Was it only a few weeks, or years ago that all this had happened to her?
There were some children on the quay, the children who had learned to love her, and amongst them the mite she had held in her arms the morning Yorke had asked her to be his wife. They clustered around her as usual, and she had hard work to keep the tears from her eyes—they were in her voice—as she kissed them.
"'Oo coming back soon, Mith Lethlie?" lisped Trottie, her favorite; and Leslie murmured, Yes, she would come back soon.
When she got back to Sea View, she found her father ready to start, and in an impatient anxiety to do so.
"We are going to London on important business, Mrs. Merrick," Leslie heard him saying to Mrs. Merrick, "Most important business. I—er—anticipate a change in our circumstances; a great change. The world has at last awakened to the fact that my pictures are not—er—without merit," he laughed with a kind of bombastic modesty. "Oh, yes, we shall come back to our old friends, Mrs. Merrick. We shall not forget Sea View, and—er—if I am not mistaken the world of art will not forget it. Some day, possibly, Sea View will become celebrated as the temporary residence of one of England's first artists; eh, Leslie?" and he smiled at her with a childish conceit.