And within a few days he was at Brighton, with the especial object of finding out what he could about Rachel’s life while staying with her mother. It was with a fast-beating heart and an uncomfortable feeling that he had not come in an honest capacity, but in the character of a spy, that Gerard rang the bell of the old-fashioned but substantial lodging-house on the Brighton sea-front, the address of which had been given him by Lady Jennings. He asked the maid who opened the door whether Miss Davison was at home. “No, sir, not Miss Davison; but Mrs. Davison is,” answered the servant at once. Gerard decided at once to see Mrs. Davison and to find out something at least about the mother of the girl in whom he was so much interested. He had heard two different accounts of her; the one, from Rachel, implied that she was a woman of some character, deeply suffering from the change she had suffered in circumstances, and the other, from Rose Aldington, which was quite another kind of person. He was shown into a sitting-room overlooking the parade, and there he found a lady not yet past middle age, with hair scarcely touched with gray, and so like her elder daughter that it was impossible to see the one without being reminded of the other. Mrs. Davison remembered the name, when Gerard was announced, and welcoming him with an outstretched hand, said-- “Ah, Mr. Buckland, I have heard something about you from both my daughters, and I am very glad to make your acquaintance.” Gerard was surprised and much pleased to hear this, though he wondered in what way he had been mentioned by the girls. Mrs. Davison, who seemed a placid, happy-looking woman, and who had laid down her novel when he came in, and begun to fondle a white Persian cat who resented the attention after the manner of his kind, invited him to take a chair near her, and asked him if he was staying in Brighton. “Only for a day,” said he; “but I was so anxious to make your acquaintance, knowing your two daughters, as I have the pleasure of doing, that I thought I would venture to call.” “I’m very glad you did,” said Mrs. Davison. “To tell you the truth, although I’m so handsomely lodged here, through the cleverness and hard work of my eldest daughter--which I daresay you know all about, Mr. Buckland, I’m rather lonely down here. You see, although Brighton is near London, it is not quite the same thing for one’s friends to take a hansom or an omnibus to come and see one, as to take the train.” “Of course not. I wonder you didn’t settle in London, since you are so much alone,” said Gerard. Mrs. Davison sighed with resignation. “It was a fancy of my daughter Rachel’s,” she explained, “that I should be happier down here by the sea. But I sometimes think, though I haven’t liked to say so, that I would rather have had a tiny flat somewhere nearer my friends in town.” She spoke very gently, but it was evident that she suffered more acutely than she liked to own from her isolation.