thought with amusement of the
difference between this substantial meal in the honeysuckle arbour of the
old inn garden, and the fashionable teas then going on in crowded
drawing-rooms in town, where people hurried in, took a tiny roll of thin
bread-and-butter, and a sip at luke-warm tea, which had stood
sufficiently long to leave an abiding taste of tannin; heard or imparted
a few more or less detrimental facts concerning mutual friends; then
hurried on elsewhere, to a cucumber sandwich, colder tea, which had stood
even longer, and a fresh instalment of gossip.

"Oh, why do we do it?" mused Lady Ingleby. Then, taking up her scarlet
parasol, she crossed the little lawn, and stood at the garden gate, in
the afternoon sunlight, debating in which direction she should go.

Usually her walks took her along the top of the cliffs, where the larks,
springing from the short turf and clumps of waving harebells, sang
themselves up into the sky. She loved being high above the sea, and
hearing the distant thunder of the breakers on the rocks below.

But to-day the steep little street, down through the fishing village, to
the cove, looked inviting. The tide was out, and the sands gleamed
golden.

Also, from her seat in the arbour, she had seen Jim Airth's tall figure
go swinging along the cliff edge, silhouetted against the clear blue of
the sky. And one sentence in the letter she had just received, made this
into a factor which turned her feet toward the shore.

The friendly Cornish folk, sitting on their doorsteps in the sunshine,
smiled at the lovely woman in white serge, who passed down their village
street, so tall and graceful, beneath the shade of her scarlet parasol.
An item in the doctor's prescription had been the discarding of widow's
weeds, and it had seemed quite natural to Myra to come down to her first
Cornish breakfast in a cream serge gown.

Arrived at the shore, she turned in the direction she usually took when
up above, and walked quickly along the firm smooth sand; pausing
occasionally to pick up a beautifully marked stone, or to examine a
brilliant sea-anemone or gleaming jelly-fish, left stranded by the tide.

Presently she reached a place where the cliff jutted out toward the sea;
and, climbing over slippery rocks, studded with shining pools in which
crimson seaweed waved, crabs scudded sideways from her passing shadow,
and darting shrimps flicked across and buried themselves hastily in the
sand, Myra fo