'The streets are built with large pavements,' he told her, 'so that jostling may be avoided, and there are many open spaces where people may loiter and congregate; the bonnets exhibited in the plate-glass windows, you can see, are obviously intended for holiday wear.' She stopped to look at these. 'Not one,' he said, 'is as pretty as the one you're wearing.' 'It's a pretty little hat,' she answered, and he pointed to the spider-legged piers and to a high headland, a sort of green cap over the ocean. 'Do you know that the fellow who owns that building has made a fortune?' said Montgomery, pointing to the roofs which began to appear above the edge of the common. 'Did he really?' replied Kate, trying to appear interested. 'Yes; he began with a sort of shanty where he sold ginger-beer and lemonade. It became the fashion to go out there, and now he's got dining-rooms and a spirit licence. We went up there last week, a lot of us, and we had such fun; we went donkey-riding, and Leslie had a fall. Did she tell you of it?' 'No; I've scarcely spoken to her for the last few days.' 'How's that? I thought you were such friends.' 'I like her very much; but she's always on the stage at night, and I don't like--I mean I should like--but I don't know that she would like me to go and see her.' 'And why not, pray?' 'Well, I thought she mightn't like me to come and see her, because, I'm--well, on account of Dick.' 'There's nothing between them now; that's all over ages ago, and she's dead nuts on Bret.' Kate had been nearly a fortnight with the mummers, but she had lived almost apart. She had not yet learnt that in the company she was in no opprobrium was attached to the fact of a woman having a lover, and she still supposed that because she had left her husband Leslie might not like to associate with her. To learn, then, that she had only replaced another woman in Dick's affections came upon her with a shock, and it was the very suddenness of the blow that saved her from half the pain; for it was impossible for a woman who saw in the world nothing but the sacrifice she had made for the man she loved, to realize the fact that Dick's love of her was a toy that had been taken up, just as love of Miss Leslie was a toy that had been laid down. It did not occur to her to think that the man she was living with might desert her, nor did she experience any very cruel pangs of jealousy; she was more startled than anything else by the appearance of a third person in the world which for the last week had seemed so entirely her own. 'What do you mean?' she said, stopping abruptly. 'Was Dick in love with Miss Leslie before he knew me?' Montgomery coloured, and strove to improvise excuses. 'No,' he said, 'of course he wasn't really in love with her; but we used to chaff him about her; that's all.' 'Why should you do that, when she is in love with Bret?' said Kate harshly.