iety
of his fellow-men; here he could dwell, solitary and apart, surrounded
on three sides by the grey, dividing sea, and protected on the fourth
by the steep untempting climb that lay betwixt the town and the lonely
house on the cliff.

"'Ere you are, miss. This is Dr. Selwyn's."

The voice of her Jehu roused her from her reflections to find that the
cab had stopped in front of a white-painted wooden gate bearing the
legend, "Sunnyside," painted in black letters across its topmost bar.

"I'll take the keb round to the stable-yard, miss; it'll be more
convenient-like for the luggage," added the man, with a mildly
disapproving glance towards the narrow tiled path leading from the gate
to the house-door.

Sara nodded, and, having paid him his fare, made her way through the
white gateway and along the path.

There seemed a curious absence of life about the place. No sound of
voices broke the silence, and, although the front door stood invitingly
open, there was no sign of any one hovering in the background ready to
receive her.

Vaguely chilled--since, of course, they must be expecting her--she rang
the bell. It clanged noisily through the house but failed to produce
any more important result than the dislodging of some dust from a ledge
above which the bell-wire ran. Sara watched it fall and lie on the floor
in a little patch of fine, greyish powder.

The hall, of which the open door gave view, though of considerable
dimensions, was poorly furnished. The wide expanse of colour-washed
wall was broken only by a hat-stand, on which hung a large assortment of
masculine hats and coats, all of them looking considerably the worse
for wear, and by two straight-backed chairs placed with praiseworthy
exactitude at equal distances apart from the aforesaid rather
overburdened piece of furniture. The floor was covered with linoleum
of which the black and white chess-board pattern had long since
retrogressed with usage into an uninspiring blur. A couple of threadbare
rugs completed a somewhat depressing "interior."

Sara rang the bell a second time, on this occasion with an irritable
force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken
the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently
heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a
middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste,
appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed