The feeling, however, had no immediate¹ effect upon Mr. Millborne’s actions.  He soon got over his trifling² illness, and was vexed³ with himself for having, in a moment of impulse, confided⁴ such a case of conscience to anybody.

 

But the force which had prompted it, though latent, remained with him and ultimately grew stronger.  The upshot was that about four months after the date of his illness and disclosure, Millborne found himself on a mild spring morning at Paddington Station, in a train that was starting for the west.  His many intermittent⁵ thoughts on his broken promise from time to time, in those hours when loneliness brought him face to face with his own personality, had at last resulted in this course.

 

The decisive stimulus⁶ had been given when, a day or two earlier, on looking into a Post-Office Directory, he learnt that the woman he had not met for twenty years was still living on at Exonbury under the name she had assumed when, a year or two after her disappearance⁷ from her native town and his, she had returned from abroad as a young widow with a child, and taken up her residence at the former city.  Her condition was apparently⁸ but little changed, and her daughter seemed to be with her, their names standing⁹ in the Directory as ‘Mrs. Leonora Frankland and Miss Frankland, Teachers of Music and Dancing.’

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