s home."

The Captain understood her.

In the morning, however, he felt all his doubts return. Mrs. Jacobus's
quick, firm step sounded above, below him; presently she came in with a
jug of yellow cream, and set it on the table, adjusting the dishes,
putting a glass of holly in the middle, opening the window-curtains to
let the cold, gray, wintry light fall on the white cloth and pretty blue
china service.

"Those oysters now?" said the Captain, anxiously. "Ann's a poor cook."

"She's clean as a Shaker, though. But I broiled them myself,"--laughing
to herself to see his relieved face.

"They're all right, then, Charlotte?"

"Yes."

She would give her mind to the oysters, he knew. It had been her way to
put a little of her brains and blood into all her jobs in life,
finishing each with a self-satisfied little nod. No wonder that she was
worn, now that she was a middle-aged woman.

"She's lost something, Lotty has since I knew her," he thought, watching
the light figure in its dark blue dress moving about; "but she's the
right stuff for home use,"--with some vague idea in his old salt-water
brain of delicate, incomplete faces suiting best with moonlight and
country strolls, and of the sparkle of dinner-lights and brilliant eyes
agreeing together, but that a face like Charlotte's was the one for the
breakfast-table. The shrewd, kindly eyes, the color on her face, and the
laugh came on you as fresh as a child's,--if her hair was a bit gray.

She had gone to the bay-window that overlooked the stretch of coast on
which the heavy winter tide was coming in, and grown silent watching it.
The Captain called to her; he wanted nothing to put the breakfast back
this morning. And he fancied that to a woman who had been a leader in
the world of culture and refinement yonder this sky and loud foreboding
surf might have some meaning of which he knew nothing.

"Nature's voices, eh?" coming to her side.

Some expression that had held her face suddenly escaped it.

"I am watching for Jerome. Yonder he comes with your fisherman, by the
inlet,"--pointing to two dark figures in the mist crossing the sands
below.

The house stood on a ledge, facing the sea: ramparts of rock, gray and
threatening in this light, running down on either side, and shutting out
all outlook but that of the dull, obstinate stretch of sand on which the
sea had beaten and fallen back for centuries, with the same baffled,
melancholy cry. Behind the house w