s; tiny beads of
moisture hung on everybody's eyelashes. Those who had come out to the
seaside from the hot streets of Flodmouth felt when they emerged from
the railway station, as if they were plunging into a cold vapour bath.

When Caroline went to relieve her colleague Lillie at tea-time, she was
met by a stream of nurses, protesting infants and middle-aged women on
their way home. And as the men who had just arrived from a day's
business in the city made straight for their lodgings, Thorhaven in the
very midst of the season took on an air of exclusion--of remoteness.
You could notice the wash of the waves again now.

The mist crept steadily along inland, muffling the church, the trees
beyond--almost hiding the privet hedge from Miss Ethel as she glanced
out of the window.

"A heavy roke. I hope it won't last," she said; but she was not really
thinking of what she was saying because her attention was engrossed by
the noises on the other side of the hedge. Never the same
continuously, but always changing, so that the ear never became dulled
by knowing what to expect. A sharply whistled tune. Voices. The
knock, knock, knock of a tool on a hard substance. A sound of
scraping. Then blessed silence for a few seconds. Then knock, knock,
knock again. She turned impatiently to Mrs. Bradford, who sat close up
to the window reading the paper. "Thank goodness, it is nearly five;
the men will be gone directly."

"You should try to get used to it," said Mrs. Bradford. "You have let
it get on your nerves." And she returned at once to the newspaper in
which she was reading a minutely-reported divorce case; for though a
stolid and intensely respectable woman she loved to read these reports.
"It is plain to see that the husband wants to get rid of his wife," she
said after a while.

"Well, that seems easily done nowadays," said Miss Ethel, listening
still as she spoke. "Perhaps women don't realize that though they can
easily get rid of an unsatisfactory husband, it will be just as easy
for a satisfactory husband to get rid of them."

But Mrs. Bradford did not care for abstract questions. "I expect the
Marchioness will have the custody of the children," she said.

So Miss Ethel took up the other half of the paper to try and distract
her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to
dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a
sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes.