nforgiving, In the doorway she turned.

"It is not for your own sake that you persist? It was not to gratify
yourself--to be made a lady--that you plotted this? Very well; you
shall be taken at your word. I cannot counsel Frank against his honour;
if he insists, and you still accept the sacrifice, he shall marry you.
But from that hour--you understand?--you have seen the last of him.
I know Frank well enough to promise it."

She paused to let the words sink in and watch their effect. This was
not only cruel, but a mistake; for it gave Bassett--who was past caring
for it--the last word.

"If you do, miss," she said drearily, yet with a mind made up,
"I daresay that will be best."

II.

Long before I heard this story I knew three of the characters in it.
Just within the harbour beside which I am writing this--on your left as
you enter it from the sea--a little creek runs up past Battery Point to
a stout sea-wall with a turfed garden behind it and a low cottage, and
behind these a steep-sided valley, down which a stream tumbles to a
granite conduit. It chokes and overflows the conduit, is caught again
into a granite-covered gutter by the door of the cottage, and emerges
beyond it in a small cascade upon the beach. At spring tides the sea
climbs to the foot of this cascade, and great then is the splashing.
The land-birds, tits and warblers, come down to the very edge to drink;
but none of them--unless it be the wagtail--will trespass on the beach
below. The rooks and gulls, on their side, never forage above the
cascade, but when the ploughing calls them inland, mount and cross the
frontier-line high overhead. All day long in summer the windows of the
cottage stand open, and its rooms are filled with song; and night and
day, summer and winter, the inmates move and talk, wake and sleep, to
the contending music of the waters.

It had lain tenantless for two years, when one spring morning Miss Bracy
and Mr. Frank Bracy arrived and took possession. They came (for aught
we knew) out of nowhere; but they brought a good many boxes, six cats,
and a complete set of new muslin blinds. On their way they purchased a
quart of fresh milk, and Mr. Frank fed the cats while Miss Bracy put up
the blinds. In the afternoon a long van arrived with a load of
furniture; and we children who had gathered to watch were rewarded by a
sensation when the van started by disgorging an artist's lay-figure,
followed by a suit of armo