bout ecclesiastical edifices;
but tourists looked at them, and so would she--a proceeding for which no
one would have credited her with any great originality, such, for
instance, as that she subsequently showed herself to possess. The
churches soon oppressed her. She tried the Museum, but came out because
it seemed lonely and tedious.

Yet the town and the walks in this land of strawberries, these
headquarters of early English flowers and fruit, were then, as always,
attractive. From the more picturesque streets she went to the town
gardens, and the Pier, and the Harbour, and looked at the men at work
there, loading and unloading as in the time of the Phoenicians.

'Not Baptista? Yes, Baptista it is!'

The words were uttered behind her. Turning round she gave a start, and
became confused, even agitated, for a moment. Then she said in her usual
undemonstrative manner, 'O--is it really you, Charles?'

Without speaking again at once, and with a half-smile, the new-comer
glanced her over. There was much criticism, and some resentment--even
temper--in his eye.

'I am going home,' continued she. 'But I have missed the boat.'

He scarcely seemed to take in the meaning of this explanation, in the
intensity of his critical survey. 'Teaching still? What a fine
schoolmistress you make, Baptista, I warrant!' he said with a slight
flavour of sarcasm, which was not lost upon her.

'I know I am nothing to brag of,' she replied. 'That's why I have given
up.'

'O--given up? You astonish me.'

'I hate the profession.'

'Perhaps that's because I am in it.'

'O no, it isn't. But I am going to enter on another life altogether. I
am going to be married next week to Mr. David Heddegan.'

The young man--fortified as he was by a natural cynical pride and
passionateness--winced at this unexpected reply, notwithstanding.

'Who is Mr. David Heddegan?' he asked, as indifferently as lay in his
power.

She informed him the bearer of the name was a general merchant of Giant's
Town, St. Maria's island--her father's nearest neighbour and oldest
friend.

'Then we shan't see anything more of you on the mainland?' inquired the
schoolmaster.

'O, I don't know about that,' said Miss Trewthen.

'Here endeth the career of the belle of the boarding-school your father
was foolish enough to send you to. A "general merchant's" wife in the
Lyonesse Isles. Will you sell pounds of soap and pennyworths of tin
tacks, or whole bars