It was nearly four o’clock now. That previous afternoon at Brighton had been a time of misery; and long into the night he had been kept awake by dull and brooding speculation, varied by bitter self-reproach. All the same he felt himself irresistibly drawn thither again; whatever was happening down there by the sea-side, he wanted to know; his imaginings were a more cruel torture than anything his eyes could tell him. And perhaps—he added to himself, with an ominous darkening of the brows—perhaps there might be a chance of his meeting this rival of his face to face, the better to measure him, and learn what both of them had to expect.
He caught the four-thirty express at Victoria, and got whirled away down. But he did not go to Mrs. Ellison’s house, nor yet to the Bedford Hotel, at which his friend Musselburgh was staying; he went to the Bristol, so as to keep himself a little out of observation. He was lucky enough to get a bedroom; and that was all he required; he did not even wait to look at it; he left the hotel and went wandering down the Marine Parade, which was now a mass of darkness lit up by innumerable points of yellow fire.
Whither away then? If only he knew the street in which they had taken lodgings he could soon find out their daily habits, himself remaining unseen; but he had nothing beyond a vague recollection that they had spoken of some hill behind the town. However, Brighton, though now grown a big place, has a few leading thoroughfares in which everybody who is a visitor is pretty sure to be encountered sooner or later; and in this particular instance it was a good deal sooner than he could have dreamed of.
He was walking along the seaward side of the Parade, with but a casual glance now and again at this or that passer-by, when suddenly, on the other side, at the corner of German Place, three figures came under the glare of a gas-lamp, and these he instantly recognised. Occasionally as they went on they became indistinguishable in the dusk; then again a gas-lamp would bring them into vivid relief—the tall and slim young girl, the square-set old man with the picturesque white hair, the young gentleman with the yellow cover-coat. They were talking together, and walking quickly, for the night was cold.