“Let us go home by railway with papa, after all,” she pleaded earnestly. “I would rather go with him—shall we?”
Mrs. Swancourt looked around for a moment, as if unable to decide. “Ah,” she exclaimed, “it is too late now. Why did not you say so before, when we had plenty of time?”
The Juliet had at that minute let go, the engines had started, and they were gliding slowly away from the quay. There was no help for it but to remain, unless the Juliet could be made to put back, and that would create a great disturbance. Elfride gave up the idea and submitted quietly. Her happiness was sadly mutilated now.
The woman whose presence had so disturbed her was exactly like Mrs. Jethway. She seemed to haunt Elfride like a shadow. After several minutes’ vain endeavour to account for any design Mrs. Jethway could have in watching her, Elfride decided to think that, if it were the widow, the encounter was accidental. She remembered that the widow in her restlessness was often visiting the village near Southampton, which was her original home, and it was possible that she chose water-transit with the idea of saving expense.
“What is the matter, Elfride?” Knight inquired, standing before her.
“Nothing more than that I am rather depressed.”
“I don’t much wonder at it; that wharf was depressing. We seemed underneath and inferior to everything around us. But we shall be in the sea breeze again soon, and that will freshen you, dear.”
The evening closed in and dusk increased as they made way down Southampton Water and through the Solent. Elfride’s disturbance of mind was such that her light spirits of the foregoing four and twenty hours had entirely deserted her. The weather too had grown more gloomy, for though the showers of the morning had ceased, the sky was covered more closely than ever with dense leaden clouds. How beautiful was the sunset when they rounded the North Foreland the previous evening! now it was impossible to tell within half an hour the time of the luminary’s going down. Knight led her about, and being by this time accustomed to her sudden changes of mood, overlooked the necessity of a cause in regarding the conditions—impressionableness and elasticity.
Elfride looked stealthily to the other end of the vessel. Mrs. Jethway, or her double, was sitting at the stern—her eye steadily regarding Elfride.
“Let us go to the forepart,” she said quickly to Knight. “See there—the man is fixing the lights for the night.”