"Good-bye?"
"Yes; I leave Brighton early to-morrow."
"So suddenly?"
"Why, not exactly suddenly. I always meant to travel this winter. Can I do anything for you—at Cairo?"
He was so pale and cold and wretched-looking, that she almost pitied him—pitied him in spite of the wild joy growing up in her heart. Aurora had refused him—it was perfectly clear—refused him! The soft blue eyes filled with tears at the thought that a demigod should have endured such humiliation. Talbot pressed her hand gently in his own clammy palm. He could read pity in that tender look, but possessed no lexicon by which he could translate its deeper meaning.
"You will wish your uncle good-bye for me, Lucy," he said. He called her Lucy for the first time; but what did it matter now? His great affliction set him apart from his fellow-men, and gave him dismal privileges. "Good-night, Lucy; good-night and good-bye. I—I—shall hope to see you again—in a year or two."
The pavement of the East Cliff seemed so much air beneath Talbot Bulstrode's boots as he strode back to the Old Ship; for it is peculiar to us, in our moments of supreme trouble or joy, to lose all consciousness of the earth we tread, and to float upon an atmosphere of sublime egotism.
But the captain did not leave Brighton the next day on the first stage of his Egyptian journey. He stayed at the fashionable watering-place; but he resolutely abjured the neighbourhood of the East Cliff, and, the day being wet, took a pleasant walk to Shoreham through the rain; and Shoreham being such a pretty place, he was no doubt much enlivened by that exercise.
Returning through the fog at about four o'clock, the captain met Mr. John Mellish close against the turnpike outside Cliftonville.
The two men stared aghast at each other.