ain that may turn
clear, definite thought into a welter of blind anguish, when the soul
in its agony snatches at any anodyne, true or false, which may seem to
promise relief.

A little irritably she folded up Elisabeth's letter. It was disquieting
in some ways--she could not quite explain why--and just now she felt
averse to wrestling with disturbing ideas. She only wanted to lie
still, basking in the tranquil peace of the afternoon, and listen to the
murmuring voice of the sea.

She closed her eyes indolently, and presently, lulled by the drowsy
rhythm of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff, she fell asleep.

She woke with a start. An ominous drop of rain had splashed down on to
her cheek, and she sat up, broad awake in an instant and shivering a
little. It had turned much colder, and a wind had risen which whispered
round her of coming storm, while the blue sky of an hour ago was hidden
by heavy, platinum-coloured clouds massing up from the south.

Another and another raindrop fell, and, obeying their warning, Sara
sprang up and bent her steps in the direction of home. But she was too
late to avoid the storm which had been brewing, and before she had gone
a hundred yards it had begun to break in drifting scurries of rain,
driven before the wind.

She hurried on, hoping to gain the shelter of the woods before the
threatened deluge, but within ten minutes of the first heralding drops
it was upon her--a torrent of blinding rain, sweeping across the upland
like a wet sheet.

She looked about her desperately, in search of cover, and perceiving,
on the further side of a low stone wall, what she took to be a wooden
shelter for cattle, she quickened her steps to a run, and, nimbly
vaulting the wall, fled headlong into it.

It was not, however, the cattle shed she had supposed it, but a roughly
constructed summer-house, open on one side to the four winds of heaven
and with a wooden seat running round the remaining three.

Sara guessed immediately that she must have trespassed again on the Far
End property, but reflecting that neither its owner nor his lynx-eyed
servant was likely to be abroad in such a downpour as this, and that,
even if they were, and chanced to discover her, they could hardly object
to her taking refuge in this outlying shelter, she shook the rain from
her skirts and sat down to await the lifting of the storm.

As always in such circumstances, the time seemed to pass inordinately
slowly, b