grandfather, that weighty, eerie impression of
Death felt for the first time, the dreadful uncertainty of the Feverel
affair, all things were quite enough for misery, but this feeling of
loneliness was new to him.

He had always had friends, but even when they had failed him there had
been behind them the House--its traditions, its records, its
history--his aunt and uncle, and, most reassuring of all, himself.

But now all these had failed him. His friends were vaguely
unattractive; Randal was terribly superficial, he was betraying the
House; his aunt and uncle were unsatisfactory, and for himself--well,
he wasn't quite so splendid as he had once thought. He was wretchedly
dissatisfied with it all and felt that he would give all the polish and
culture in the world for a simple, unaffected friendship in which he
could trust.

"Some one," he said angrily, "that would do something"--and his
thoughts were of his father.

It was dark now, and he went down to the sea, because he liked the
white flash of the waves as they broke on the beach--this sudden
appearing and disappearing and the rustle of the pebbles as they turned
slowly back and vanished into the night again.

He liked, too, the myriad lights of the town: the rows of lamps, rising
tier on tier into the night sky, like people in some great amphitheatre
waiting in silence for the rising of a mighty curtain. He always
thought on these nights of Germany--Germany, Worms, the little
bookseller, the distant gleam of candles in the Cathedrals, the flash
of the sun through the trees over the Rhine, the crooked, cobbled
streets at night with the moon like a lamp and the gabled roofs
flinging wild shadows over the stones ... the night-sea brought it very
close and carried Randal and Cambridge and Dahlia Feverel very far
away, although he did not know why.

He watched the light of the town and the waves and the great flashing
eye of the lighthouse and then turned back. As he climbed the steps up
the cliff he heard some one behind him, and, turning, saw that it was
Mary Bethel. She said "Good-night" quickly and was going to pass him,
but he stopped her.

"I haven't seen you for ages, Mary," he said. He resolved to speak to
her. She knew his father and had always been a good sort--perhaps she
would help him.

"Are you coming back, Robin?" she said, stopping and smiling. There
was a lamp at the top of the cliff where the road ran past the steps,
and by the ligh