ntry through which they
were driving, yet to two of them at least the afternoon sun seemed to
shine over it with a certain sadness. It was as if they were bidding
good-bye to some beautiful scene they could scarcely expect to
revisit. For many a day thereafter, indeed, Wenna seemed to recollect
that drive as though it had happened in a dream. She remembered the
rough and lonely road leading up sharp hills and getting down into
valleys again, the masses of ferns and wild-flowers by the stone
walls, the wild and undulating country, with its stretches of yellow
furze, its clumps of trees and its huge blocks of gray granite. She
remembered their passing into a curious little valley, densely wooded,
the winding path of which was not well fitted for a broad carriage and
a pair of horses. They had to watch the boughs and branches as they
jolted by. The sun was warm among the foliage: there was a resinous
scent of ferns about. By and by the valley abruptly opened on a wide
and beautiful picture. Lamorna Cove lay before them, and a cold fresh
breeze came in from the sea. Here the world seemed to cease suddenly.
All around them were huge rocks and wild-flowers and trees; and far up
there on their left rose a hill of granite, burning red with the
sunset; but down below them the strange little harbor was in shadow,
and the sea beyond, catching nothing of the glow in the west, was gray
and mystic and silent. Not a ship was visible on that pale plain; no
human being could be seen about the stone quays and the cottages; it
seemed as if they had come to the end of the world, and were its last
inhabitants. All these things Wenna thought of in after days, until
the odd and plain little harbor of Lamorna, and its rocks and bushes
and slopes of granite, seemed to be some bit of Fairyland, steeped in
the rich hues of the sunset, and yet ethereal, distant and
unrecoverable.

Mrs. Rosewarne did not at all understand the silence of these young
people, and made many attempts to break it up. Was the mere fact of
Mr. Trelyon returning to Eglosilyan next day anything to be sad about?
He was not a school-boy going back to school. As for Wenna, she had got
back her engaged ring, and ought to have been grateful and happy.

"Come now," she said: "if you propose to drive back by the Mouse Hole,
we must waste no more time here. Wenna, have you gone to sleep?"

The girl started as if she really had been asleep: then she walked
back to the carriage and