eat wind had passed; now it only blew in
little gusts heavy with driving rain. The sea was sullen and grey and
grand. It beat in thunder on the shore and flew over the sunken rocks in
columns of leaden spray. The whole earth seemed one desolation, and all
its grief was centred in this woman's broken heart.

Geoffrey, too, was up. How he had passed the remainder of that tragic
night we need not inquire--not too happily we may be sure. He heard the
front door close behind Beatrice, and followed out into the rain.

On the beach, some half of a mile away, he found her gazing at the sea,
a great white gull wheeling about her head. No word of greeting passed
between them; they only grasped each other's hands and looked into each
other's hollow eyes.

"Come under the shelter of the cliff," he said, and she came. She stood
beneath the cliff, her head bowed low, her face hidden by the hood, and
spoke.

"Tell me what has happened," she said; "I have dreamed something, a
worse dream than any that have gone before--tell me if it is true. Do
not spare me."

And Geoffrey told her all.

When he had finished she spoke again.

"By what shall I swear," she said, "that I am not the thing which you
must think me? Geoffrey, I swear by my love for you that I am innocent.
If I came--oh, the shame of it! if I came--to your room last night, it
was my feet which led me, not my mind that led my feet. I went to sleep,
I was worn out, and then I knew no more till I heard a dreadful sound,
and saw you before me in a blaze of light, after which there was
darkness."

"Oh, Beatrice, do not be distressed," he answered. "I saw that you were
asleep. It is a dreadful thing which has happened, but I do not think
that we were seen."

"I do not know," she said. "Elizabeth looked at me very strangely this
morning, and she sees everything. Geoffrey, for my part, I neither know
nor care. What I do care for is, what must _you_ think of me? You must
believe, oh!--I cannot say it. And yet I am innocent. Never, never did I
dream of this. To come to you--thus--oh, it is shameless!"

"Beatrice, do not talk so. I tell you I know it. Listen--I drew you. I
did not mean that you should come. I did not think that you would come,
but it was my doing. Listen to me, dear," and he told her that which
written words can ill express.

When he had finished, she looked up, with another face; the deep shadow
of her shame had left her. "I believe you, Geoffrey," she sai