rious. No skipper, new to his craft, could ever admire the
beauty of their lines, nor look up at the swelling canvas and exult he
knew not why; no passengers would boast of their speed or praise their
elegance. They were honest merchantmen, laborious, trustworthy, and of
good courage, who took foul weather and peril in the day's journey and
made no outcry. And with a sure instinct she saw the romance in the
humble course of their existence and the beauty of an unboasting
performance of their duty; and often, as she watched them, her fancy
glowed with the thought of the varied merchandise they carried, and
their long sojourning in foreign parts. There was a subtle charm in them
because they went to Southern seas and white cities with tortuous
streets, silent under the blue sky.

Striving still to free herself of a passionate regret, the lonely woman
turned away and took a path that led across the marshes. But her heart
sank, for she seemed to recognise the flats, the shallow dykes, the
coastguard station, which she had known all her life. Sheep were grazing
here and there, and two horses, put out to grass, looked at her
listlessly as she passed. A cow heavily whisked its tail. To the
indifferent, that line of Kentish coast, so level and monotonous, might
be merely dull, but to her it was beautiful. It reminded her of the home
she would never see again.

And then her thoughts, which had wandered around the house in which she
was born, ever touching the fringe as it were, but never quite settling
with the full surrender of attention, gave themselves over to it
entirely.

* * *

Hamlyn's Purlieu had belonged to the Allertons for three hundred years,
and the recumbent effigy, in stone, of the founder of the family's
fortunes, with his two wives in ruffs and stiff martingales, was to be
seen in the chancel of the parish church. It was the work of an Italian
sculptor, lured to England in company of the craftsmen who made the
lady-chapel of Westminster Abbey; and the renaissance delicacy of its
work was very grateful in the homely English church. And for three
hundred years the Allertons had been men of prudence, courage, and
worth, so that the walls of the church by now were filled with the lists
of their virtues and their achievements. They had intermarried with the
great families of the neighbourhood, and with the help of these marble
tablets you might have made out a roll of all that was distinguished in
Hampshire. The