Sheila had let go his hand; her eyes were still turned toward the ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more definitely suffering. She was mistaken, that was all. “I will try to do better, and please you,” she said; and then she went away. CHAPTER XV. A FRIEND IN NEED. Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl’s mind, and held full possession of it--that she was in a world with which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her husband’s love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart. Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady Leveret, who was one of Lavender’s especial patrons, and to whom he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that she was a stranger, an interloper, a “third wheel to the cart.” She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and monotonous thing--not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place; she did not know where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the wives and the daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the sea-life down in the South. And as they drove along the King’s Road on this afternoon she suddenly called out, “Look, Frank!” On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him. “It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila.