casion, as they were all good walkers, it was
arranged that they should meet halfway between the island and the town
in which Pierston had lodgings. It was impossible that by this time the
pretty young governess should not have guessed the ultimate reason of
these rambles to be a matrimonial intention; but she inclined to the
belief that the widow rather than herself was the object of Pierston's
regard; though why this educated and apparently wealthy man should be
attracted by her mother--whose homeliness was apparent enough to the
girl's more modern training--she could not comprehend.

They met accordingly in the middle of the Pebble-bank, Pierston coming
from the mainland, and the women from the peninsular rock. Crossing the
wooden bridge which connected the bank with the shore proper they moved
in the direction of Henry the Eighth's Castle, on the verge of the
rag-stone cliff. Like the Red King's Castle on the island, the interior
was open to the sky, and when they entered and the full moon streamed
down upon them over the edge of the enclosing masonry, the whole present
reality faded from Jocelyn's mind under the press of memories. Neither
of his companions guessed what Pierston was thinking of. It was in this
very spot that he was to have met the grandmother of the girl at his
side, and in which he would have met her had she chosen to keep the
appointment, a meeting which might--nay, must--have changed the whole
current of his life.

Instead of that, forty years had passed--forty years of severance from
Avice, till a secondly renewed copy of his sweetheart had arisen to fill
her place. But he, alas, was not renewed. And of all this the pretty
young thing at his side knew nothing.

Taking advantage of the younger woman's retreat to view the sea through
an opening of the walls, Pierston appealed to her mother in a whisper:
'Have you ever given her a hint of what my meaning is? No? Then I think
you might, if you really have no objection.'

Mrs. Pierston, as the widow, was far from being so coldly disposed in
her own person towards her friend as in the days when he wanted to marry
her. Had she now been the object of his wishes he would not have needed
to ask her twice. But like a good mother she stifled all this, and said
she would sound Avice there and then.

'Avice, my dear,' she said, advancing to where the girl mused in the
window-gap, 'what do you think of Mr. Pierston paying his addresses to
you--coming cour