pect him to remember that?
There must have been plenty of quarrels among the men, all shut up
together, and all weary of each other's company, no doubt."

"Plenty of quarrels!" Crayford repeated; "and every one of them made up
again."

"And every one of them made up again," Mrs. Crayford reiterated, in her
turn. "There! a plainer answer than that you can't wish to have. Now are
you satisfied? Mr. Steventon, come and lend a hand (as you say at sea)
with the hamper--Clara won't help me. William, don't stand there doing
nothing. This hamper holds a great deal; we must have a division of
labor. Your division shall be laying the tablecloth. Don't handle it
in that clumsy way! You unfold a table-cloth as if you were unfurling
a sail. Put the knives on the right, and the forks on the left, and the
napkin and the bread between them. Clara, if you are not hungry in this
fine air, you ought to be. Come and do your duty; come and have some
lunch!"

She looked up as she spoke. Clara appeared to have yielded at last to
the conspiracy to keep her in the dark. She had returned slowly to the
boat-house doorway, and she was standing alone on the threshold, looking
out. Approaching her to lead her to the luncheon-table, Mrs. Crayford
could hear that she was speaking softly to herself. She was repeating
the farewell words which Richard Wardour had spoken to her at the ball.

"'A time may come when I shall forgive _you_. But the man who has robbed
me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met.' Oh, Frank!
Frank! does Richard still live, with your blood on his conscience, and
my image in his heart?"

Her lips suddenly closed. She started, and drew back from the doorway,
trembling violently. Mrs. Crayford looked out at the quiet seaward view.

"Anything there that frightens you, my dear?" she asked. "I can see
nothing, except the boats drawn up on the beach."

"_I_ can see nothing either, Lucy."

"And yet you are trembling as if there was something dreadful in the
view from this door."

"There _is_ something dreadful! I feel it, though I see nothing. I feel
it, nearer and nearer in the empty air, darker and darker in the sunny
light. I don't know what it is. Take me away! No. Not out on the beach.
I can't pass the door. Somewhere else! somewhere else!"

Mrs. Crayford looked round her, and noticed a second door at the inner
end of the boat-house. She spoke to her husband.

"See where that door leads to, William."

Crayf