Part of the Rector’s letter Louis showed to Marian, and Marian repeated it to Agnes. It was cruel--it was unjust of Lionel--and he knew himself that it was. Agnes, it was possible, did not know--at all events, she had no right to betray to him the secrets of another; more than that, he knew the meaning now of the little book which he carried everywhere with him, and felt in his heart that _he_ was the real person addressed. He knew all that quite as well as she did, as she tried, with a quivering lip and a proud wet eye, to fortify herself against the injustice of his reproach, but that did not hinder him from saying it. He was in that condition--known, perhaps, occasionally to most of us--when one feels a certain perverse pleasure in wounding one’s dearest. He had no chance of mentioning her, who occupied so much of his thoughts, in any other way, and he would rather put a reproach upon Agnes than leave her alone altogether; perhaps she herself even, after all, at the bottom of her heart, was better satisfied to be referred to thus, than to be left out of his thoughts. They had never spoken to each other a single word which could be called wooing--now they were perhaps separated for ever--yet how strange a link of union, concord, and opposition, was between these two! CHAPTER XXX. AN ADVENTURE. It was September--the time when all Englishmen of a certain “rank in life” burn with unconquerable longings to get as far away from home as possible--and there was nothing remarkable in the appearance of this solitary traveller pacing along Calais pier--nothing remarkable, except his own personal appearance, which was of a kind not easily overlooked. There was nothing to be read in his embrowned but refined face, nor in his high thoughtful forehead. It was a face of thought, of speculation, of a great and vigorous intellectual activity; but the haughty eyes looked at no one--the lips never moved even to address a child--there was no response to any passing glance of interest or inquiry. His head was turned towards England, over the long sinuous weltering waves of that stormy Channel which to-day pretended to be calm; but if he saw anything, it was something which appeared only in his own imagination--it was neither the far-away gleam, like a floating mist, of the white cliffs, nor the sunbeam coming down out of the heart of a cloud into the dark mid-current of that treacherous sea.