"
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.
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