garden, rubbing the muscles of his thigh.

"You must look after Wallie, my dear," he said. "Age is beginning to find
me out. And after all, he will learn more of the tact and manners which
he wants from you than from a rough man like me," and it did not occur to
Sylvia, who was of a natural modesty of thought, that he had any other
intention of throwing them thus together than to rid himself of a guest
with whom he had little in common.

But a week later she changed her mind. She was driving Walter Hine
one morning into Weymouth, and as the dog-cart turned into the road
beside the bay, and she saw suddenly before her the sea sparkling in
the sunlight, the dark battle-ships at their firing practice, and
over against her, through a shimmering haze of heat, the crouching
mass of Portland, she drew in a breath of pleasure. It seemed to her
that her companion gave the same sign of enjoyment, and she turned to
him with some surprise. But Walter Hine was looking to the wide
beach, so black with holiday makers that it seemed at that distance a
great and busy ant-heap.

"That's what I like," he said, with a chuckle of anticipation. "Lot's o'
people. I've knocked about too long in the thick o' things, you see, Miss
Sylvia, kept it up--I have--seen it right through every night till three
o'clock in the morning, for months at a time. Oh, that's the real thing!"
he broke off. "It makes you feel good."

Sylvia laughed.

"Then if you dislike the country," she said, and perhaps rather eagerly,
"why did you come to stay with us at all?"

And suddenly Hine leered at her.

"Oh, you know!" he said, and almost he nudged her with his elbow. "I
wouldn't have come, of course, if old Garratt hadn't particularly told
me that you were agreeable." Sylvia grew hot with shame. She drew
away, flicked the horse with her whip and drove on. Had she been used,
she wondered, to lure this poor helpless youth to the sequestered
village where they stayed?--and a chill struck through her even on
that day of July. The plot had been carefully laid if that were so;
she was to be hoodwinked no less than Wallie Hine. What sinister thing
was then intended?

She tried to shake off the dread which encompassed her, pleading to
herself that she saw perils in shadows like the merest child. But
she had not yet shaken it off when Walter Hine cried out excitedly
to her to stop.

"Look!" he said, and he pointed toward an hotel upon the sea-front which
at that m