it when the
creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to
draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the
pasturage lands. I love it when the sea changes its colour as the
clouds pass over the sun, and the wind blows from the west. The place
is well enough then. But there are times when it is nothing but a great
wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold
here, cold to the bone. Then I hate the place worse than ever."

"Have you ever tried to go away for a time?" Jeanne asked.

"I went once to London," the girl said, turning her head a little away.
"I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had
expected, but they didn't, and my father died suddenly, so I came home
to take care of the farm."

Jeanne nodded sympathetically. She was beginning to wonder why this
girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking
to her. She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not
wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her
black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown. Her coarse
brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped
ankles. Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear
complexion. She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other
nation. There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant
about her, than her position seemed to warrant.

"There is a question, miss," she said at last, abruptly, "I should like
to ask you. I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been
in when you came to look at the rooms."

"What is it?" Jeanne asked quietly.

"I've a good eye for faces," Kate said, "and I seldom forget one.
Weren't you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few
weeks ago?"

Jeanne nodded.

"Yes," she said, "I was staying there. It was because I liked the place
so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I
came back."

There was a moment's silence. Jeanne looked up and found Kate's
magnificent eyes fixed steadfastly upon her face.

"Is it for no other reason, miss," she asked, "that you have come back?"

"For none other in the world," Jeanne answered. "I was unhappy in
London, and I wanted to get somewhere where I should be quite unknown.
That is why I came here."

"You didn't come back," Kate asked, "to see more of Mr. De la Borne,
then?"

The simple dire