Then it _was_ Frederick Massingbird! Lionel Verner quitted the woman's side, and leaned over the rail of the steamer, apparently watching the water. He could not, by any dint of reasoning or supposition, make out the mystery. How Frederick Massingbird could be alive; or, being alive, why he had not come home before to claim Sibylla--why he had not claimed her before she left Australia--why he did not claim her now he was come. A man without a wife might go roving where he would and as long as he would, letting his friends think him dead if it pleased him; but a man with a wife could not in his sane senses be supposed to act so. It was a strange thing, his meeting with this woman--a singular coincidence; one that he would hardly have believed, if related to him, as happening to another. It was striking five when he again knocked at Dr. Cannonby's. He wished to see Captain Cannonby still; it would be the crowning confirmation. But he had no doubt whatever that that gentleman's report would be: "I saw Frederick Massingbird die--as I believed--and I quitted him immediately. I conclude that I must have been in error in supposing he was dead." Dr. Cannonby had returned, the servant said. He desired Lionel to walk in, and threw open the door of the room. Seven or eight people were sitting in it, waiting. The servant had evidently mistaken him for a patient, and placed him there to wait his turn with the rest. He took his card from his pocket, wrote on it a few words, and desired the servant to carry it to his master. The man came back with an apology. "I beg your pardon, sir. Will you step this way?" The physician was bowing a lady out as he entered the room--a room lined with books, and containing casts of heads. He came forward to shake hands, a cordial-mannered man. He knew Lionel by reputation, but had never seen him. "My visit was not to you, but to your brother," explained Lionel. "I was in hopes to have found him here." "Then he and you have been playing at cross-purposes to-day," remarked the doctor, with a smile. "Lawrence started this morning for Verner's Pride." "Indeed," exclaimed Lionel. "Cross-purposes indeed!" he muttered to himself. "He heard some news in Paris which concerned you, I believe, and hastened home to pay you a visit." "Which concerned me!" repeated Lionel. "Or rather Mrs. Massingbird--Mrs. Verner, I should say." A sickly smile crossed Lionel's lips. Mrs. Massingbird! Was it already known? "Why," he asked, "did you call her Mrs. Massingbird?" "I beg your pardon for my inadvertence, Mr. Verner," was the reply of Dr. Cannonby. "Lawrence knew her as Mrs. Massingbird, and on his return from Australia he frequently spoke of her to me as Mrs. Massingbird, so that I got into the habit of thinking of her as such. It was not until he went to Paris that he heard she had exchanged the name for that of Verner."