showered him with questions and conjectures and
requisitions in which nothing but the impossibility of going ashore saved
him from the instant devotion of all his energies to a world-wide,
inquiry into Burnamy's whereabouts.

The next morning he was up before Major Eltwin got out, and found the
second-cabin passengers free of the first-cabin promenade at an hour when
their superiors were not using it. As he watched these inferiors,
decent-looking, well-clad men and women, enjoying their privilege with a
furtive air, and with stolen glances at him, he asked himself in what
sort he was their superior, till the inquiry grew painful. Then he rose
from his chair, and made his way to the place where the material barrier
between them was lifted, and interested himself in a few of them who
seemed too proud to avail themselves of his society on the terms made. A
figure seized his attention with a sudden fascination of conjecture and
rejection: the figure of a tall young man who came out on the promenade
and without looking round, walked swiftly away to the bow of the ship,
and stood there, looking down at the water in an attitude which was
bewilderingly familiar. His movement, his posture, his dress, even, was
that of Burnamy, and March, after a first flush of pleasure, felt a
sickening repulsion in the notion of his presence. It would have been
such a cheap performance on the part of life, which has all sorts of
chances at command, and need not descend to the poor tricks of
second-rate fiction; and he accused Burnamy of a complicity in the bad
taste of the affair, though he realized, when he reflected, that if it
were really Burnamy he must have sailed in as much unconsciousness of the
Triscoes as he himself had done. He had probably got out of money and had
hurried home while he had still enough to pay the second-cabin fare on
the first boat back. Clearly he was not to blame, but life was to blame
for such a shabby device; and March felt this so keenly that he wished to
turn from the situation, and have nothing to do with it. He kept moving
toward him, drawn by the fatal attraction, and at a few paces' distance
the young man whirled about and showed him the face of a stranger.

March made some witless remark on the rapid course of the ship as it cut
its way through the water of the bow; the stranger answered with a strong
Lancashire accent; and in the talk which followed, he said he was going
out to see the cotton-mills at Fal