While Marian Nowell was away at this little social gathering, Captain
Sedgewick and Gilbert Fenton sat under the walnut-trees smoking their
cigars, with a bottle of claret on a little iron table before them.

"When I came back from India fourteen years ago on the sick-list," began
the Captain, "I went down to Brighton, a place I had been fond of in my
young days, to recruit. It was in the early spring, quite out of the
fashionable season, and the town was very empty. My lodgings were in a
dull street at the extreme east, leading away from the sea, but within
sight and sound of it. The solitude and quiet of the place suited me; and
I used to walk up and down the cliff in the dusk of evening enjoying the
perfect loneliness of the scene. The house I lived in was a comfortable
one, kept by an elderly widow who was a pattern of neatness and
propriety. There were no children; for some time no other lodgers; and
the place was as quiet as the grave. All this suited me very well. I
wanted rest, and I was getting it.

"I had been at Brighton about a month, when the drawing-room floor over
my head was taken by a lady, and her little girl of about five years old.
I used to hear the child's feet pattering about the room; but she was not
a noisy child by any means; and when I did happen to hear her voice, it
had a very pleasant sound to me. The lady was an invalid, and was a good
deal of trouble, my landlady took occasion to tell me, as she had no
maid of her own. Her name was Nowell.

"Soon after this I encountered her on the cliff one afternoon with her
little girl. The child and I had met once or twice before in the hall;
and her recognition of me led to a little friendly talk between me and
the mother. She was a fragile delicate-looking woman, who had once been
very pretty, but whose beauty had for the most part been worn away,