t struck her as strangely
familiar--a thing given back rather than newly discovered, making her
mind and innocent body alike eager with absorbed yet half-shuddering
recognition. A good ten years had elapsed since then, but her early
impression still persisted, producing in her a certain spiritual and
emotional unrest.

And at that, by natural transition, her thought turned from Tom Verity to
fix itself upon the one other possible witness of her ignominy--namely,
the young master mariner who, coming ashore in Proud, the
lobster-catcher's cranky boat, had walked up the shifting shingle to the
crown of the ridge and stood watching her, in silence, for a quite
measurable period, before passing on his way down to the ferry. For, from
her first sight of him, had he not seemed to evoke that same sense of
remembrance, to be, like the reek off the mud-flats, already well-known,
something given back to her rather than newly discovered? She was still
ignorant as to who ho was or where he came from, having been far too
engrossed by mortification to pay any attention to the conversation
between her cousin and Jennifer during their little voyage down the
tide-river, and having disdained to make subsequent enquiries.--She had a
rooted dislike to appear curious or ask questions.--But now, reviewing
the whole episode, it broke in on her that the necessity for escape and
foreboding of danger, which culminated in her flight, actually dated
from the advent of this stranger rather than from Tom's request for
enlightenment concerning unaccountable noises heard in the small hours.

Damaris slipped her feet down off the leg-rest, and sat upright, tense
with the effort to grasp and disentangle the bearings of this revelation.
Was her search ended? Had she indeed detected the cause of her
discomfiture; or only pushed her enquiry back a step further, thus
widening rather than limiting the field of speculation? For what
conceivable connection, as she reflected, could the old lobster-catcher's
passenger have with any matter even remotely affecting herself!

Then she started, suddenly sensible of a comfortable, though warmly
protesting, human voice and presence at her elbow.

"Yes, you may well look astonished, Miss Damaris. I know how late it is,
and have been going on like anything to Lizzie over her carelessness.
Mrs. Cooper's walked up the village with Laura about some extra meat
that's wanted, and when I came through for your tea if that gir