altered, his eyes never varied, his face remained as though carved in
granite--a graven image of despair. Unspeakable weariness was in his
pose, and yet he did not relax or yield a hair's breadth to the body's
importunity. He suffered too bitterly in the spirit that night to be
aware of physical necessity.

Slowly the long hours passed. The night began to wane. A faint grey
glimmer, scarcely perceptible, came down from a mist-veiled sky. The wind
that had sunk to stillness came softly back and wandered to and fro as
though to rouse the sleeping world. Behind the mist the stars went out,
and from the rookery in the park a hoarse voice suddenly proclaimed the
coming day.

The grey light grew. In the garden ghostly shapes arose, phantoms of the
dawn that gradually resolved into familiar forms of tree and shrub. From
the rookery there swelled a din of many raucous voices. The dog in the
distance began to bark again with feverish zest, and from the stables
came Caesar's cheery answering yell.

The mist drifted away from the face of the sky. A brightness was growing
there. Stiffly, painfully, Sir Beverley struggled up from his chair,
stood steadying himself--a figure tragic and forlorn--with his hands
against the wood of the window-frame, then with a groaning effort thrust
up the sash.

Violets! Violets! The haunting scent of them rose to greet him. The air
was full of their magic fragrance. For a second he was aware of it; he
almost winced. And then in a moment he had forgotten. He stood there
motionless--a desolate old man, bowed and shrunken and grey--staring
blindly out before him, unconscious of all things save the despair that
had settled in his heart.

The night had passed and his boy had not returned.

CHAPTER XXX

THE CONFLICT

Stanbury Cliffs was no more than a little fishing-town at the foot of the
sandy cliff--a sheltered nest of a place in which the sound of the waves
was heard all day long, but which no bitter wind could reach. The peace
of it was balm to Avery's spirit. She revelled in its quiet.

Jeanie loved it too. She delighted in the freedom and the warmth, and
almost from the day of their arrival her health began to improve.

They had their quarters in what was little more than a two-storey
cottage belonging to one of the fishermen, and there was only a tiny
garden bright with marigolds between them and the shore. Day after day
they went through the little wicket gate down a slope of lo