mother her,
but with all my will I can't do the thing she needs most of all--be
young with her again. She is sad, dear child, and it's only a friend of
her own age who can comfort and cheer--"

Suddenly Miggles jerked in her bed; the fixed eyes brightened; the heavy
cheeks broadened into a smile.

"Ah-h!" she murmured happily. "Ah-h! _That_ is well, _that's_ well.
That will bring it all right"; and nestling down in the pillows, she
composed herself happily to sleep.

Across the trouble of her mind there had flashed the remembrance of the
visits of Piers Rendall.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE COTTAGE ON THE CLIFF.

For the next two years Vanna lived quietly in the cottage on the cliff,
five miles from the nearest railway station, and as many more from
anything in the shape of a town. The hamlet in which she had lived with
her aunt had been quiet and uneventful, but in comparison with Seacliff
it was a whirl of gaiety. During the summer months there was indeed a
small influx of visitors, but Seacliff had not as yet sprung into
popularity, and accommodation was limited to a few scattered houses
along the sea-front and the big red hotel on the top of the cliff. The
hotel was closed in the winter months, and the first day that Vanna
looked across the bay and beheld the smoke rising from the chimneys, she
knew a thrill of joy in the realisation that the long grey winter was at
an end. Long and grey, yet not unhappy. Looking back over the
monotonous record of the months, and remembering her own tranquillity
and content, Vanna marvelled, as many of us have done in our time, at
the unlooked for manner in which our prayers have met their response.
She had asked for guidance; had pleaded, with a very passion of
earnestness, for some miracle of grace to fill her empty life, but no
miracle had happened, no flash of light had illumined the darkness; the
heavens had appeared as brass to her cry--and yet, yet, had not the
answer been vouchsafed? It would not have been her own choice to pass
the best years of her youth in seclusion, with no other companion than a
homely, unsophisticated old woman, over whom the shadow of death crept
nearer and nearer. She had dreamt of romance and adventure, and not of
a home bounded by two cliff walls; nevertheless, in this companionship
and in this seclusion she had found peace, and as the time passed by a
returning sense of joy and interest in life. She was loved, she was
needed, she