w that Custance was sketching a seascape not far from that spot.

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Quirk. "What more should we want? You and Kathleen
are all I need--with Denis to come to tea, if he has the time."

"Sorry to disappoint you," said Denis Quirk, "but I must be at the
office all day. Cairns is away on holiday, and not a man with any
initiative but Tim O'Neill to support me."

Denis Quirk's absence was a great relief to Sylvia Jackson. She still
entertained a tender admiration for him, but, as he continued to resist
her fascinations, she preferred that he should not be present to
frustrate or ridicule her plans. Mrs. Quirk and Kathleen were easily
duped, but she feared the penetration of Denis Quirk. Nevertheless she
made pretence of a great disappointment.

"We counted on you," she remarked in an agonised voice.

"Never count on a paper man. We are the most unreliable people in the
world," he answered. "Make the old mother happy, and don't keep her out
too late."

With these words he went down the avenue whistling the air of a melody
that Kathleen had sung the night before.

Sylvia had studied her plans with the greatest care, and she put them
into action when they were safely arrived at the strip of beach that
lies beyond the river bar.

"You and Granny prefer to be alone," she told Kathleen. "I intend to
take my sketch book and see what I can do with the view round the
point."

Therewith she sauntered away, giving them no time to protest. The spot
she had chosen for her sketch is one of the most magnificent on the
coast.

It is a small patch of sand, terminated towards the east by black
precipitous rocks, against which the sea is perpetually pounding in
great breakers. On this day the sea was a wonderful dark blue, and very
peaceful, save where it thundered at the base of the cliffs. On the
horizon a bank of grey clouds rested on the water like a remote island
crowned with mounts and peaks. The smoke of a distant steamer rose in an
almost straight line upwards; nearer the shore a small fishing boat was
moving gently backwards and forwards, its sails barely filled by the
gentle breeze. There was a sense of rest in the scene, as if the ocean
were slumbering after the strife of a few days previously.

Here Sylvia found the artist, working quietly at a picture that he had
almost completed. He had caught the vivid colouring of the ocean, the
grey bank of clouds and the distant smoke, and had transferred them