eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began
to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never
saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the
husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping
and contradictory criticisms on the whole of her sex, one man finding
in her a proof that all women are angels, and the next discovering as
certainly that all women are fools.

Presently Avory left the fishing village on the plea of business and
went back to London, leaving his wife and child in the little hotel by
the sea. There had followed a whole beautiful sunlit month of peace
and quiet for Mrs. Avory, while her little girl played on the sands and
she worked and read, or walked and fished with Nigel, and the colour
came back to her cheeks, and the vague look of terror left her eyes.
And Toffy determined that Mrs. Avory should have a good time for once.

The years between boyhood and manhood had been bridged over by a sense
that some one needed his care, and that he was a protection to a little
woman who was weak and unhappy. And, whether it was love or not, the
thing was honourable and straightforward as an English boy can make it.
And then one night by the late post had come a letter from Horace Avory
of a kind particularly calculated to wound. Mrs. Avory brought it to
Toffy to read out on the sands; and she broke down suddenly and sobbed
as though her heart would break; and Toffy to comfort her had told her
that he loved her, and meant every word he said, and asked what on
earth he could do for her, and said that she must really try not to cry
or it would make her ill. He put his arm round the trembling
form,--and Mrs. Avory took his hand in hers and clung to it; and then,
comforted, she had dried her eyes at last, and gone back to the little
hotel again. Toffy saw the whole scene quite plainly before him now.
The little whitewashed inn with the hill behind it, the moonlit water
of the bay, and the tide coming rolling in across the wet sands. When
they met on the following day he told her with boyish chivalry that he
would wait for her for years if need were, and that some day they
should be happy together.

That had all happened long ago now, and during the years between they
had hoped quite openly and candidly that it would all come right some
day, although hardly saying even to themselves that the coming right
was dependent upon Horace Avory's death.