ea!"

He spoke without turning: "The sea is a relentless thing for a man to
fight. ... There are other tides more persistent than the sea, but like
it--like it in its menace."

His face seemed thinner, older; she noticed his cheek bones for the
first time. Then, meeting her eyes, youth returned with a laugh and a
touch of colour; and, without understanding exactly how, she was aware,
presently, that they had insensibly slipped back to their light badinage
and gay inconsequences--back to a footing which, strangely, seemed to be
already an old footing, familiar, pleasant, and natural to return to.

"Is that Shotover House?" he asked as they came to the crest of the last
hillock between them and the sea.

"At last, Mr. Siward," she said mockingly; "and now your troubles are
nearly ended."

"And yours, Miss Landis?"

"I don't know," she murmured to herself, thinking of the telegram with
the faintest misgiving.

For she was very young, and she had not had half enough out of life as
yet; and besides, her theories and preconceived plans for the safe
and sound ordering of her life appeared to lack weight--nay, they were
dwindling already into insignificance.

Theory had almost decided her to answer Mr. Quarrier's suggestion with a
'Yes.' However, he was coming from the Lakes in a day or two. She could
decide definitely when she had discussed the matter with him.

"I wish that I owned this dog," observed Siward, as the phaeton entered
the macadamised drive.

"I wish so, too," she said, "but he belongs to Mr. Quarrier."

CHAPTER II IMPRUDENCE

A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one
massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars
and outcropping ledges--the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening
under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame;
this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.

Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a
ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set
here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell
away to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal
battering of the Atlantic.

As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two
servants appeared; a rather imposing specimen bowed them through the
doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a
drift-wood fire glimmered like a