ng. She
rose from her bed, and went to the door. It was fastened on the outside.

A cold perspiration stood on her forehead. She opened her lips to shriek
to her mother: but checked herself when she heard her stirring gently in
the outer room. Her pulses throbbed too loudly at first for her to hear
distinctly: but she felt that it was no moment for giving way to
emotion; by a strong effort of will, she conquered herself; and then,
with that preternatural acuteness of sense which some women possess, she
could hear everything her mother was doing. She heard her put on her
shawl, her bonnet; she heard her open the front door gently. It was now
long past midnight. Whither could she be going at that hour?

She heard her go gently to the left, past the window; and yet her
footfall was all but inaudible. No rain had fallen, and her shoes ought
to have sounded on the hard earth. She must have taken them off. There,
she was stopping, just by the school-door. Now she moved again. She must
have stopped to put on her shoes; for now Grace could hear her steps
distinctly, down the earth bank, and over the rattling shingle of the
beach. Where was she going? Grace must follow!

The door was fast: but in a moment she had removed the table, opened the
shutter and the window.

"Thank God that I stayed here on the ground floor, instead of going back
to my own room when Major Campbell left. It is a providence! The Lord
has not forsaken me yet!" said the sweet saint, as, catching up her
shawl, she wrapped it round her, and slipping through the window,
crouched under the shadow of the house, and looked for her mother.

She was hurrying over the rocks, a hundred yards off. Whither? To drown
herself in the sea? No; she held on along the mid-beach, right across
the cove, toward Arthur's Nose. But why? Grace must know.

She felt, she knew not why, that this strange journey, that wild "The
Lord will provide," had to do with the subject of her suspicion. Perhaps
this was the crisis; perhaps all will he cleared up to-night, for joy or
for utter shame.

The tide was low; the beach was bright in the western moonlight: only
along the cliff foot lay a strip of shadow a quarter of a mile long,
till the Nose, like a great black wall, buried the corner of the cove in
darkness.

Along that strip of shadow she ran, crouching; now stumbling over a
boulder, now crushing her bare feet between the sharp pebbles, as,
heedless where she stepped, she kept