bundle of
manuscript. This done I told the waiter to procure me a mounted
messenger, and within three quarters of an hour of our arrival at
Penzance my letter was on its way at a hard gallop to the little
straggling village of ---- of which Frank Howe was vicar.

When we had dined I stood with Grace at the window of the sitting-room
that overlooked the noble bight of Mount's Bay. On our left rose the
lofty Marazion hills, with the little town of Marazion lying white at
the eastern base of the range, and beyond ran the dark blue loom of
Cudden Point melting into the dim azure of the Lizard district. The
sun was in the west, his light was red, and this warm dye made a
glorious autumn picture of that sweep of cliff embraced waters.
Several colliers lay high and dry on the mud just abreast of the town,
but the _Spitfire_ had vanished, towed, as I might suppose, by boats to
the security of the harbour that was hidden from me. Far past the
distant giant foreland point was an orange-coloured sail showing like a
delicate edge of cloud over the edge of the blue, lens-like rim of the
sea. I thought of the _Carthusian_--of our sea marriage--and lifting
my darling's hand, toyed mechanically with the wedding-ring upon it,
whilst I looked at her.

She had been pale and nervous ever since our arrival; her delight in
being safely ashore at last had seemed but a short-lived sensation.
She looked at the ring with which I was toying and said:

"What shall I do with this thing?"

"Go on wearing it down to the time when it will be necessary to remove
it in order to replace it."

"And what will your cousin think of me--a clergyman! And his wife is a
clergyman's daughter. Oh, Herbert!" she added, sighing in a shuddering
way.

"They will admire you, they will consider you the sweetest of girls.
What else can they think, Grace?"

But her mood was what it had been at the time we sailed out of Boulogne
harbour. She was depressed, frightened, acutely sensitive, dreading
opinion, and all to such a degree that she could utter nothing which
was not full of apprehension and regret, so that anyone who had watched
us unseen must have concluded that either we were not lovers, or that
we had been married much longer than our tender years suggested. But
lovers we were all the same! and however it might have been with _her_
in that little passage of worry, uncertainty, and nervousness, she had
never been dearer to me; never had I felt pro