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She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck's letter and put it in her bosom, to be read again. "If my lot had fallen among good people," she thought, "perhaps I might have belonged to the Church which took care of that poor girl."
The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck's character his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming notice had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as strongly as she felt it now.
"Have you forgotten," Randal asked, "that the marriage has been dissolved?" Bennydeck's answer ignored the law. "I remember," he said, "that the marriage has been profaned." The front windows of Brightwater Cottage look out on a quiet green lane in Middlesex, which joins the highroad within a few miles of the market town of Uxbridge.
At once perplexed and distressed by that startling change in Catherine which he had observed when her child approached her, Bennydeck's customary firmness failed him, when the course of conduct toward his betrothed wife which it might be most becoming to follow presented itself to him as a problem to be solved.
He had held his name in reserve, feeling certain of the effect which he would produce when he pronounced it. The result took him completely by surprise. Not the slightest appearance of agitation showed itself in Bennydeck's manner. On the contrary, he looked as if there was something that interested him in the discovery of the name.
If I sent to these poor people some copies of the New Testament, translated into their own language, would my gift be accepted?" Strongly interested by this time, in studying Captain Bennydeck's character on the side of it which was new to him, Randal owned that he observed with surprise the interest which his friend felt in perfect strangers.
Randal had noticed, in Captain Bennydeck's face, signs which betrayed that the bitterest disappointment of his life was far from being a forgotten disappointment yet. If it had been put by any other person, poor Kitty's absurd question might have met with a bitter reply. As it was, her uncle only said: "My dear child, that is no business of yours or mine."
Captain Bennydeck's eyes followed her, as she left the room, with an expression of interest which more than confirmed the favorable impression that he had already produced on Catherine. She was on the point of asking if he was married, and had children of his own, when Kitty came back, and declared the right address to be Buck's Hotel, Sydenham.
They left the house together one to go to Sydney's lodgings, the other on his way to Mr. Sarrazin's office. Bennydeck's first words told the friendless girl that her fears had wronged him. "My dear, how like your father you are! You have his eyes and his smile; I can't tell you how pleasantly you remind me of my dear old friend."
The Captain seemed to wonder why this impression should have been produced by what he had just said. "I only try," he answered, "to do what good I can, wherever I go." "Your life must be a happy one," Randal said. Captain Bennydeck's head drooped. The shadows that attend on the gloom of melancholy remembrance showed their darkening presence on his face.
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