d which, in the surprise
of their unexpected meeting, Dr. Grey had involuntarily placed on her
shoulder, she had felt that he shrank instantly from her touch, and
withdrew his hand hastily, as if displeased with the familiarity of
the action. All the turbid elements in her nature boiled up. Could it
be possible that he really loved his rosy-faced, bright-eyed,
prattling ward? She set this conjecture squarely before her, and
forced herself to contemplate it. If he desired to marry Muriel, of
course he would do so whenever he chose, and the thought that he might
call her his wife, and give her his name, his caresses, wrung a cry of
agony from Salome's lips. She threw herself on the sand-bank, and,
resting her chin on her folded arms, gazed vacantly across the yellow
strand at the glassy, leaden sea that stared back mockingly at her.

She was too miserable to feel afraid of anything but Dr. Grey's
marriage; and, moreover, she had so often, during the early years of
her life, gone to and fro in the darkness, that she was a stranger to
that timidity which girls usually indulge under similar circumstances.
The fishermen had abandoned the neighboring huts some months before,
and "Solitude," one mile distant, was the nearest spot occupied by
human beings.

She neither realized nor cared that it was growing darker, and, after
awhile, when the sea was no longer visible through the dun haze that
brooded over it, she shut her eyes and moaned.

Dr. Grey had walked on, hoping every moment to meet her returning
home; and, more than once, he was tempted to retrace his steps,
thinking that she might have taken some direct path across the hills,
instead of the circuitous one bending around their base. Quickening
his pace till it matched his pulse, which an indefinable anxiety
accelerated, he finally saw the huts dimly outlined against the starry
sky and quiet sea.

Pausing, he took off his hat to listen to

"The water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds,"

and, while he stood wiping his brow, there came across the beach,--

"A cry that shivered to the tingling stars,
And, as it were one voice, an agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come since the making of the world."

In the uncertain light he ran towards the clump of trees where he had
left Salome, and strained his eyes to discover some moving thing. He
knew t