ement of a tailoress at East
Quarriers. He also let his iron-grey beard grow as it would, and what
little hair he had left from the baldness which had followed the fever.
And thus, numbering in years but two-and-sixty, he might have passed for
seventy-five.

Though their early adventure as lovers had happened so long ago, its
history had become known in the isle with mysterious rapidity and
fulness of detail. The gossip to which its bearing on their present
friendship gave rise was the subject of their conversation on one of
these walks along the cliffs.

'It is extraordinary what an interest our neighbours take in our
affairs,' he observed. 'They say "those old folk ought to marry; better
late than never." That's how people are--wanting to round off other
people's histories in the best machine-made conventional manner.'

'Yes. They keep on about it to me, too, indirectly.'

'Do they! I believe a deputation will wait upon us some morning,
requesting in the interests of matchmaking that we will please to get
married as soon as possible.... How near we were to doing it forty years
ago, only you were so independent! I thought you would have come back
and was much surprised that you didn't.'

'My independent ideas were not blameworthy in me, as an islander, though
as a kimberlin young lady perhaps they would have been. There was simply
no reason from an islander's point of view why I should come back, since
no result threatened from our union; and I didn't. My father kept that
view before me, and I bowed to his judgment.'

'And so the island ruled our destinies, though we were not on it.
Yes--we are in hands not our own.... Did you ever tell your husband?'

'No.'

'Did he ever hear anything?'

'Not that I am aware.'

Calling upon her one day, he found her in a state of great discomfort.
In certain gusty winds the chimneys of the little house she had taken
here smoked intolerably, and one of these winds was blowing then. Her
drawing-room fire could not be kept burning, and rather than let a woman
who suffered from rheumatism shiver fireless he asked her to come
round and lunch with him as she had often done before. As they went he
thought, not for the first time, how needless it was that she should be
put to this inconvenience by their occupying two houses, when one would
better suit their now constant companionship, and disembarrass her
of the objectionable chimneys. Moreover, by marrying Marcia, and
establishi