of the existing scheme of
life.

But Caroline was different; and as she walked slowly along with Winnie
disconsolately trudging by her side, she had an angry sense of being
shut out from all sorts of things which she had as much right to
possess as any other girl. She hated that shut door--Laura and Godfrey
inside, and herself outside; then she thought how easily she could
destroy all that if she liked, and how Laura's easy, flowery courtship
was only possible because _she_ allowed it.

Winnie spoke again and had to be answered; then Caroline went back to
the aching round of thoughts again. She wouldn't be put aside like
that--knowing nothing. She would give up, but she would not be left
outside, guessing what was going on behind closed doors.

She tramped along, dull, dry-eyed, assailed by a strange feeling that
she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's;
yet all the time passionately aware that she was a "business girl" and
as good as anybody.

Then there was Winnie again. Well, poor kid, she'd had no sort of an
evening---- "Look here, Winnie, I'll take you again next week and
we'll stop all the time."

"Honour bright?" said Winnie.

"Honour bright!" said Caroline. So Winnie cheered up, because she knew
Cousin Carrie did not break promises.

_Chapter XVI_

_New-Comers_

During the night the wind freshened, then for three days it blew half a
gale from the south-west. The sea was no longer a playfellow for
little boys and girls, but a monster whose white fangs gleamed through
the grey-blue water far out towards the horizon, ready to crunch the
bones of ships and sailors alike with a sort of roistering glee.

A few visitors still fought their way up and down the promenade; and if
of a sanguine temperament, they shouted above the wind, as they passed
Caroline in the pay-box, that this really _ought_ to blow the cobwebs
away! But the furnished houses and apartments near the sea, where a
turn-up bed on the landing could not be obtained for love or money six
weeks ago, were now mostly empty. Even the visitors from Flodmouth who
had remained in Thorhaven because they were so near home, began to
think comfortably of lighted streets, theatres, cinemas, concerts--a
general settling down to their ordinary routine of work and play.

When Caroline came out of the pay-box at the tea hour, she also
realized that the season was over. A sort of flat finality lay over
everything,