try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall
we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till the
Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you
come down."

Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
Lavender added, "And we shall introduce you to that young American
lady whom you are so anxious to meet."

"Oh, is she to be there?" he said, looking rather curiously at
Lavender.

"Yes, she and her mother. We are going down together."

"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
associate.

However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and