ented, and could just discern what a handsome, commanding,
imperious face it was--quite of a piece with the proud tones of her
voice. She was a new type altogether in his experience; and her accent
was not so local as Avice's.

'Can you tell me the time, please?'

He looked at his watch by the aid of a light, and in telling her that it
was a quarter past seven observed, by the momentary gleam of his match,
that her eyes looked a little red and chafed, as if with weeping.

'Mr. Pierston, will you forgive what will appear very strange to you, I
dare say? That is, may I ask you to lend me some money for a day or two?
I have been so foolish as to leave my purse on the dressing-table.'

It did appear strange: and yet there were features in the young lady's
personality which assured him in a moment that she was not an impostor.
He yielded to her request, and put his hand in his pocket. Here it
remained for a moment. How much did she mean by the words 'some money'?
The Junonian quality of her form and manner made him throw himself by
an impulse into harmony with her, and he responded regally. He scented a
romance. He handed her five pounds.

His munificence caused her no apparent surprise. 'It is quite enough,
thank you,' she remarked quietly, as he announced the sum, lest she
should be unable to see it for herself.

While overtaking and conversing with her he had not observed that the
rising wind, which had proceeded from puffing to growling, and from
growling to screeching, with the accustomed suddenness of its changes
here, had at length brought what it promised by these vagaries--rain.
The drops, which had at first hit their left cheeks like the pellets of
a popgun, soon assumed the character of a raking fusillade from the
bank adjoining, one shot of which was sufficiently smart to go through
Jocelyn's sleeve. The tall girl turned, and seemed to be somewhat
concerned at an onset which she had plainly not foreseen before her
starting.

'We must take shelter,' said Jocelyn.

'But where?' said she.

To windward was the long, monotonous bank, too obtusely piled to afford
a screen, over which they could hear the canine crunching of pebbles by
the sea without; on their right stretched the inner bay or roadstead,
the distant riding-lights of the ships now dim and glimmering; behind
them a faint spark here and there in the lower sky showed where the
island rose; before there was nothing definite, and could be nothing,
t