us," said Margaret in
soft suggestion.

Now that the encounter had been made, he pulled himself together to
face it. He felt shame-faced and altogether unstrung, and he knew that
the instinct that had made him insist on isolation had been fully
justified. He was over-conscious, too, of the stains on his hands as
he held it out. And yet beneath all his discomfort there was a full
tide of immeasurable happiness. He could not speak yet. His throat
swelled--the emotion was too overpowering. Here again was Margaret,
the real Margaret, by his side, talking to him!

His eyes took her in greedily. Under the large straw hat, with its
poppies and corn, her face showed exquisite, a face that might float
tantalisingly across a painter's vision, and vanish after but allowing
him the merest glimpse. Though she was clad in a simple dark blue
serge dress, the grace of her figure seemed to him a revelation, and a
ravishing sprig of cornflower peeped from her waistband. There was a
repose, too, and a gentleness in her bearing that made him think, by
contrast, of his Cleo, and of the uncouthness of Alice and Mary when
they attempted to be stately.

Perhaps the very thought seemed to call out to him in warning, for,
suppressing a sigh, he tore his eyes away from her.

"Why couldn't you let us know?" persisted Diana, who had been
evidently much put out by the failure of her artful letters to seduce
Archibald into giving away the secret of Morgan's whereabouts.

Mrs. Medhurst and Margaret both looked at Morgan and smiled, as if to
convey to him that _they_ understood his motives, and to indicate that
Diana was not in the secret. Diana's quick eyes, however, noted the
movement, though she said nothing just then.

"I had reasons," said Morgan, vaguely, feeling he must make some sort
of an answer to so definite a question.

"We are staying at St. Margaret's," explained Mrs. Medhurst, "and we
have been taking a stroll along the cliff-path. It began to get too
dangerous, so we climbed a fence and cut across somebody's ploughed
field, and then through a common, till at last we got on to this road.
And now we're wending our steps homeward. You, Morgan, I suppose, are
wandering after the labours of the day?"

He felt they were talking to him in as simple and natural a manner as
if they had but parted the day before, under normal circumstances; and
he was grateful for this delicacy that abstained from embarrassing him
and made the meeting