hey had not seen her where she sat in the shadow,
and she looked about her hastily in the hope of escaping unobserved. But
that was impossible. There was no way of getting out of the recess of
the rock where the cross stood, except by coming out into the light, and
no way of reaching the hotel except by crossing the open platform.

Then she thought of coughing, to call attention to her presence. She
would rise and come forward, and hurry across to the door. She felt that
she ought to have come out of the shadows as soon as the pair had
appeared, and that she had done wrong in sitting still. But then, she
told herself with perfect justice that they were strangers, and that
she could not possibly have foreseen that they had come there to
quarrel.

They were strangers, and she did not even know their names. So far as
they were concerned, and their feelings, it would be much more pleasant
for them if they never suspected that any one had overheard them than if
she were to appear in the midst of their conversation, having evidently
been listening up to that point. It will be admitted that, being a
woman, she had a choice; for she knew that if she had been in Lady Fan's
place she should have preferred never to know that any one had heard
her. She fancied what she should feel if any one should cough
unexpectedly behind her when she had just been accused by the man she
loved of not loving him at all. And of course the little lady in white
loved Brook--she had called him "dear" that very afternoon. But that
Brook did not love Lady Fan was as plain as possible.

There was certainly no mean curiosity in Clare to know the secrets of
these strangers. But all the same, she would not have been a human girl,
of any period in humanity's history, if she had not been profoundly
interested in the fate of the woman before her. That afternoon she would
have thought it far more probable that the woman should break the man's
heart than that she should break her own for him. But now it looked
otherwise. Clare thought there was no mistaking the first tremor of the
voice, the look of the white face, and the indignation of the tone
afterwards. With a man, the question of revealing his presence as a
third person would have been a point of honour. In Clare's case it was a
question of delicacy and kindness as from one woman to another.

Nevertheless, she hesitated, and she might have come forward after all.
Ten slow seconds had passed since Brook