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 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. "Which is Mr. Ingram?" asked Mrs. Lorraine with considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. "Not that little man?" "Yes," said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton. "Won't you stop and speak to him?" said Sheila with great surprise. "We are late already," said her husband. "But if you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you may." Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea. But next morning she said to him, "I suppose you will be riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?" "I suppose so." "I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there," she said. "Ladies don't generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but of course you don't care for that." "I shall not go if you do not wish me."