Sunday began with rain, but also with promise of better things; far
over the sea was a broad expanse of blue, and before long the foam of
the fallen tide glistened in strong, hopeful rays. Rhoda wandered about
the shore towards St. Bees Head. A broad stream flowing into the sea
stopped her progress before she had gone very far; the only way of
crossing it was to go up on to the line of railway, which here runs
along the edge of the sands. But she had little inclination to walk
farther. No house, no person within sight, she sat down to gaze at the
gulls fishing by the little river-mouth, their screams the only sound
that blended with that of the subdued breakers.

On the horizon lay a long, low shape that might have been mistaken for
cloud, though it resembled land. It was the Isle of Man. In an hour or
two the outline had grown much clearer; the heights and hollows were no
longer doubtful. In the north became visible another remote and hilly
tract, it was the coast of Scotland beyond Solway Firth.

These distant objects acted as incentives to Rhoda's imagination. She
heard Everard Barfoot's voice as he talked of travel--of the Orient
Express. That joy of freedom he had offered her. Perhaps he was now
very near her, anxious to repeat his offer. If he carried out the
project suggested at their last interview, she would see him to-day or
to-morrow morning--then she must make her choice. To have a day's walk
with him among the mountains would be practically deciding. But for
what? If she rejected his proposal of a free union, was he prepared to
marry her in legal form? Yes; she had enough power over him for that.
But how would it affect his thought of her? Constraining him to legal
marriage, would she not lower herself in his estimation, and make the
endurance of his love less probable? Barfoot was not a man to accept
with genuine satisfaction even the appearance of bondage, and more
likely than not his love of her depended upon the belief that in her he
had found a woman capable of regarding life from his own point of
view--a woman who, when she once, loved, would be scornful of the
formalities clung to by feeble minds. He would yield to her if she
demanded forms, but afterwards--when passion had subsided--.

A week had been none too long to ponder these considerations by
themselves; but they were complicated with doubts of a more disturbing
nature. Her mind could not free itself from the thought of Monica. That
Mrs. Wi