o leave the
big steamer, and she knew she would never see him again. Robert handed
her the parasol, and unconsciously, by that curious sympathy by which we
are all affected, without any obvious channel of communication, she felt
the condition in which his nerves were. She was a little uncomfortable,
and, rising, said she thought it was time she was at home. They rose and
walked back slowly till their paths parted.

The next day Robert renewed his walk, but there was no Miss Shipton. The
summer heat had passed into thunderstorms, and these were succeeded by
miserable grey days with mist, confusing sea, land, and sky, and
obliterating every trace of colour. As he went backwards and forwards to
the house over the hill, he watched every corner and turned round a
hundred times, although his reason would have told him that to expect
Miss Shipton in the rain was ridiculously absurd.

Michael Trevanion loved his son with a father's love, but with a mother's
too. He rejoiced to talk with him as his father and friend, but there
was in him also that wild, ferocious passion for his child which
generally belongs to the woman, a passion which in its intense vitality
forecasts, apprehends, and truly discerns danger where, to the mere
intellect, there is nothing. Michael wondered a little at Robert's
unusually frequent visits to his work over the hill, and as he was in the
town one morning, he determined to cross the hill himself and see how the
house was going on. The mist, which had hung about for a week, had
gradually rolled itself into masses as the sun rose higher. It was no
longer without form and void, but was detaching itself into huge
fragments, which let in the sun and were gradually sucked up by him.
Rapidly everything became transformed, and lo! as if by enchantment, the
whole sky resumed once more its deepest blue, the perfect semicircle of
the horizon sharply revealed itself, and vessels five miles off were
visible to their spars. Michael reached the end of his journey and
waited, looking out from one of the upper stories. He saw nothing of the
splendour of the scene before him. He was restless, he did not quite
know why. He could not tell exactly why he was there, but nevertheless
he determined to remain. He generally carried a Bible in his pocket, and
he turned where he had turned so often before, to the fifteenth chapter
of Luke, and read the parable of the prodigal son. He had affixed his
own interpret