days with her mother-
in-law. They are a London family, I don't know her address.'

'Is she a poetess?'

'That I cannot say. She is very clever at verses; but she don't lean
over gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or I, so
I should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. When
she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up
pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They will
run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got in
the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awful
that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to say
that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so that
there seems something wonderful in it. 'Tis a bother to start her, so
our people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is all
alive with her. However, it will soon be dull enough; she and Lady
Petherwin are off to-morrow for Rookington, where I believe they are
going to stay over New Year's Day.'

'Where do you say they are going?' inquired Christopher, as they followed
the footman.

'Rookington Park--about three miles out of Sandbourne, in the opposite
direction to this.'

'A widow,' Christopher murmured.

Faith overheard him. 'That makes no difference to us, does it?' she said
wistfully.

Forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridge
which commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of this
nook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. Here at once they saw, in the
full light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their faces
directed over the sea.

'There she is again!' said Faith. 'She has walked along the shore from
the lawn where we saw her before.'

'Yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. She'll talk
to any poor body she meets. You see she had been out for a morning walk
instead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she has
picked up with on her way.'

'I wonder she does not prefer some rest,' Faith observed.

The road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were no
longer within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared Sandbourne
with the two musicians.

6. THE SHORE BY WYNDWAY

The east gleamed upon Ethelberta's squirrel-coloured hair as she said to
her companion, 'I have come, Picotee; but not, as you imagine, from a
night's sleep. W