nel had regained all his outward impassiveness. He stood by the
talkative woman, his arms folded. "What sort of a looking man was this
Mr. Massingbird?" he asked. "I knew a gentleman once of that name, who
went to Australia."

The woman glanced up at him, measuring his height. "I should say he was
as tall as you, sir, or close upon it, but he was broader made, and had
got a stoop in the shoulders. He was dark; had dark eyes and hair, and a
pale face. Not the clear paleness of your face, sir, but one of them
sallow faces that get darker and yellower with travelling; never red."

Every word was as fresh testimony to the suspicion that it was Frederick
Massingbird. "Had he a black mark upon his cheek?" inquired Lionel.

"Likely he might have had, sir, but I couldn't see his cheeks. He wore a
sort of fur cap with the ears tied down. My husband saw a good bit of
him on the voyage, though he was only a middle-deck passenger, and the
gentleman was a cabin. His friends have had a surprise before this," she
continued, after a pause. "He told my husband that they all supposed him
dead; had thought he had been dead these two years past and more; and he
had never sent home to contradict it."

Then it _was_ Frederick Massingbird! Lionel Verner quitted the woman's
side, and leaned over the rail of the steamer, apparently watching the
water. He could not, by any dint of reasoning or supposition, make out
the mystery. How Frederick Massingbird could be alive; or, being alive,
why he had not come home before to claim Sibylla--why he had not claimed
her before she left Australia--why he did not claim her now he was come.
A man without a wife might go roving where he would and as long as he
would, letting his friends think him dead if it pleased him; but a man
with a wife could not in his sane senses be supposed to act so. It was a
strange thing, his meeting with this woman--a singular coincidence; one
that he would hardly have believed, if related to him, as happening to
another.

It was striking five when he again knocked at Dr. Cannonby's. He wished
to see Captain Cannonby still; it would be the crowning confirmation.
But he had no doubt whatever that that gentleman's report would be: "I
saw Frederick Massingbird die--as I believed--and I quitted him
immediately. I conclude that I must have been in error in supposing he
was dead."

Dr. Cannonby had returned, the servant said. He desired Lionel to walk
in, and threw open the door