as afar.'

'What colour are her eyes?'

'Her eyes? I don't go much in for colour, being professionally sworn to
form. But, let me see--grey; and her hair rather light than dark brown.'

'I wanted something darker,' said Somers airily. 'There are so many fair
models among native Englishwomen. Still, blondes are useful property!...
Well, well; this is flippancy. But I liked the look of her.'

* * *

Somers had gone back to town. It was a wet day on the little peninsula:
but Pierston walked out as far as the garden-house of his hired castle,
where he sat down and smoked. This erection being on the boundary-wall
of his property his ear could now and then catch the tones of Avice's
voice from her open-doored cottage in the lane which skirted his fence;
and he noticed that there were no modulations in it. He knew why that
was. She wished to go out, and could not. He had observed before that
when she was planning an outing a particular note would come into her
voice during the preceding hours: a dove's roundness of sound; no doubt
the effect upon her voice of her thoughts of her lover, or lovers. Yet
the latter it could not be. She was pure and singlehearted: half an eye
could see that. Whence, then, the two men? Possibly the quarrier was a
relation.

There seemed reason in this when, going out into the lane, he
encountered one of the red jackets he had been thinking of. Soldiers
were seldom seen in this outer part of the isle: their beat from the
forts, when on pleasure, was in the opposite direction, and this man
must have had a special reason for coming hither. Pierston surveyed him.
He was a round-faced, good-humoured fellow to look at, having two little
pieces of moustache on his upper lip, like a pair of minnows rampant,
and small black eyes, over which the Glengarry cap straddled flat. It
was a hateful idea that her tender cheek should be kissed by the lips
of this heavy young man, who had never been sublimed by a single battle,
even with defenceless savages.

The soldier went before her house, looked at the door, and moved on down
the crooked way to the cliffs, where there was a path back to the forts.
But he did not adopt it, returning by the way he had come. This showed
his wish to pass the house again. She gave no sign, however, and the
soldier disappeared.

Pierston could not be satisfied that Avice was in the house, and he
crossed over to the front of her little