and laid her face upon them.

"Poor little soul!" thought the elder Miss Waddle looking at her in
silent compassion. "What brutes men are."

Miss Waddle's experience of the nobler sex was limited, but her
sentiment in the main was a correct one. It was peculiarly correct in
the present instance, for since that morning three weeks ago, when
Laurence Thorndyke had left Sea View Cottage, not a word, not a message,
not a letter had come from him. How the lonely, longing girl left in the
dull little house, watched and waited, and prayed, and grew sick to the
soul, as now, with disappointment, only those who have watched and
waited in vain, for the one they love best on earth, can know.

Was he sick--was he dead--was he faithless. Why, why, _why_ did he not
write?

They were the two questions that never left the girl's mind. She lost
the power to sleep or eat, a restless fever held her. She spent her
days, the long, vapid, sickening days, gazing down the road he must
come, the nights in wakeful, frightened thought. The one event of the
twenty-four dreary hours, was the coming home of the elder Miss Waddle
from Chelsea; the one hope that upheld her, the hope that each day she
would bring her a letter. All this long, bleak day she had lived on that
one feverish hope, and now she was here, and there was none--none!

The moments wore on. She lay there prostrate, crushed, never moving or
lifting her head. Miss Waddle the elder bent over her with tears of
compassion and indignation in her kindly, spinster eyes.

"Dear child," she said, "don't take on like this. Who knows what
to-morrow may bring? And if it brings nothing, there isn't a man on
earth worth breaking your poor heart for, as you're doing. They're a set
of selfish, heartless wretches, every one--every blessed one!" said the
elder Miss Waddle, vindictively; "so come along and have a cup of tea,
and don't pine yourself to death for him. I daresay, if the truth were
known, he's not pining much for you."

Norine lifted her face--such a sad, pathetic, patient little face.

"Don't, Miss Waddle," she said, "you mean well, I am sure, but I can't
bear it. He does not intend to forget or neglect me. He is ill--I know
that. He is ill, and I don't know where he is, or how to go to him. No,
I don't wish any tea, a mouthful of food would choke me, I think. I will
go down to the beach instead. I--I would rather be alone."

The gentle lips quivered, the gentle voice trembled o