which a common ancestry creates.

Had she possessed this gift from childhood, had it taken its natural
place in her experience through the linked and orderly progress of the
years, it would have been wholly welcome, wholly profitable and sweet.
But it was sprung upon her from the outside, quite astoundingly
ready-made. It bore down on her, and at a double, foot, horse, and siege
guns complete. Small discredit to her if she staggered under its onset,
trembled and turned faint! For as she now perceived, it was exactly this
relation of brother and sister of which she had some prescience, some dim
intuition, from her first sight of Faircloth as he stood among the
skeleton lobster-pots on board Timothy Proud's old boat. It was this call
of a common blood which begot in her unreasoning panic, which she had run
from and so wildly tried to escape. And yet it remained a gift of great
price, a crown of gold; but oh! so very heavy--just at this moment
anyhow--for her poor proud young head.

Lifting her hand off Faircloth's, she made a motion to rise. Change of
attitude and place might bring her relief, serve to steady her nerves and
restore her endangered composure! Brooding over the whole singular matter
in the peace and security of her room upstairs, her course had appeared a
comparatively easy one, granted reasonable courage and address. But the
young man's bodily presence, as now close beside her, exercised an
emotional influence quite unforeseen and unreckoned with. Under it her
will wavered. She ceased to see her way clearly, to be sure of herself.
She grew timid, bewildered, unready both of purpose and of speech.

Faircloth, meanwhile, being closely observant of her, was quick to
detect her agitation. He drew aside her chair, and backed away, leaving
her free to pass.

"I am afraid we have talked too long," he said. "You're tired. I ought to
have been more careful of you, remembered how ill you have been--and that
partly through my doing too. So now, I had better bid you good-bye, I
think, and leave you to rest."

But Damaris, contriving to smile tremulous lips notwithstanding, shook
her head. For, in lifting her hand from his, she caught sight of the
tattooed blue-and-crimson sea-bird and the initials below it. And again
her heart contracted with a spasm of tenderness; while those three
letters, more fully arresting her attention, aroused in her a fascinated,
half-shrinking curiosity. What did they mean? What could th