emed to course ever her face.
It was early to open the book of fate for omens of the future! She had
never thought of this before. The actual details and humiliations of the
Pariah's life had never presented themselves to her; and this unexpected
suggestion of the ban that shut us out from the open daylight of the
world around us, fell heavily upon her. It was the first blush of
shame! But shaking off her rich tresses, which in the heat and flurry
had fallen down over her shoulders, she looked up at me, and laughed--a
brave laugh, that chilled me to the heart.

Passing out of Dover in a carriage which we hired at the further end of
the town, we made our way in the haze of the evening toward a scattered
village on the coast near Walmer Castle. Here we established ourselves,
quite secure from interruption, and with ample opportunity, in the way
of leisure, to reflect upon our situation, and strike out permanent
plans for the future.

Leisure it was, most rare and ethereal! We had nothing on earth to do
but to walk out, and walk in again, and look at each other all day long.
The interminable stretches of strand we paced, hour after hour; the old
wooden huts on the beach, white as silver, that the sea used to beat
against every day, leaving little crests of foam in the hollows between
them, to glisten there for a moment, till the sand sucked them up; the
row of marine cottages, with pea-green shutters, and small gardens in
front, boxed up with tarred railings, and cut in the centre by a single
walk, strewn all over with the dust and fragments of shells; the single
bathing-machine that served the whole village, and seemed even too much
for it, and that looked as if it had never moved out of the one spot,
with its rusty wheels half buried in the drift of gravel and
sea-weed--all such little unchangeable items of that marvelous leisure
are strongly impressed upon me. It would have been very dreary if we had
not had something in ourselves to fall back upon; and as long as that
lasted, we bore up against the flatness and sameness of our lives. The
sea, of all things, grows heavy and wearing to people whose
constitutions are not capable of drinking in health and elasticity from
its exhilarating breezes. There is nothing so monotonous as the wailing
and lashing sea, especially in the night time, when darkness covers it,
and its presence is announced only by that eternal surging and moaning
of the waters which strike upon the inva