Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/124

 Fenella started. "To Lord Castleton!" she repeated blankly.

"Ay, ay! but he aint aboard her now; he have lent her, I hear, to a friend who has had her for the last six weeks. She started from this very port, did the Seamew, six weeks ago, bound for Madeira and the Canary Islands, where she have been cruising about ever since, and now she have come home again to the very day, as she was expected to do."

"You are quite sure Lord Castleton is not on her?" inquired Fenella, earnestly.

"Sartin sure. Miss"—they always called her "Miss," she was so young and girlish!—"his lordship was off to the south of France the werry day she started, and that's how he came to lend his schooner to his friend."

Fenella breathed anew. "And the friend's name?" she inquired, after a minute; but her acquaintance had already moved away from her side, and was talking to some cronies of his own further on.

The yacht had settled down to her moorings in the dock. The crowd began to disperse—there seemed nothing more to wait for, and Fenella, with the rest, moved away.

She had an errand or two to do in the town before going home, and so she clambered up the steep, irregular, picturesque little street, and went about her small shoppings. Just as she was about