rd. But when I have
anything to say, I talk along just as though she answered back like
an ordinary person would. I can tell if she's interested."

"Yes?"

"She's been interested in you from the start, I know. She showed it
in her look the very first time I spoke of you--that day I brought
you here to Wreckers' Head."

"But--but you have never spoken of this before. She did not come to
call."

"I'll tell you," said Tunis earnestly. "I wanted to be sure. Aunt
'Cretia knew your--er--Sarah Honey very well."

"Oh."

"Just about as well as Mrs. Ball did. When she was staying here
with Aunt Prue, she used to run over to our place a lot.

"You don't remember it," continued Tunis, grinning suddenly; "but
you were taken over there when you were a baby."

"Oh, don't! Don't!" cried the girl. "Let us not speak so lightly--so
carelessly. Suppose--suppose--"

"Suppose nothing!" exclaimed Tunis. "Don't have any fears. She
wanted to know just how you looked--every particular. Oh, she has
ways of showing what she wants without getting what you'd call
voluble! I told her about your hair--your eyes--everything. I know
from the way she looked that she accepts the fact of your being the
real Ida May without more question than Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."

She was silent, thinking. Then she sighed.

"I will accept the invitation, Tunis. But I feel--I feel that all is
not for the best. But what must be must be. So--oh, I'll go!"

CHAPTER XVI

MEMORIES--AND TUNIS

The benison of that most beautiful season of all the year, the
autumn, lay upon Wreckers' Head and the adjacent coast on that
Sunday morning. Alongshore there is never any sad phase of the fall.
One reason is the lack of deciduous trees. The brushless hills and
fields are merely turned to golden brown when the frosts touch them.

The sea--ever changing in aspect, yet changeless in tide and
restraint--was as bright and sparkling as at midsummer. Along the
distant beaches the white ruffle of the surf seemed to have just
been laundered. The green of the shallows and the blue of the deeper
sea were equally vivid.

When she first arose Sheila Macklin looked abroad from that favorite
north window of her bedroom, and saw that all the world was good. If
she had felt secret misgivings and the tremor of a nervous
apprehension, these feelings were sloughed away by this promising
morning. The fear she had expressed to Tunis Latham the evening
before did not obsess her