drying-line out, quite clear of your flowers." He winked, and she would
blush faintly.

This madness that had entered her life through the kind impulses of her
heart had reasonable details. What if some day his son returned? But she
could not even be quite sure that he ever had a son; and if he existed
anywhere he had been too long away. When Captain Hagberd got excited in
his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little
to salve her conscience.

Only once she had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope
doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her
very much. All at once over that man's face there came an expression of
horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack open out in the
firmament.

"You--you--you don't think he's drowned!"

For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his
ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit
for. On that occasion the violence of the emotion was followed by a most
paternal and complacent recovery.

"Don't alarm yourself, my dear," he said a little cunningly: "the sea
can't keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Hagberds ever did
belong to it. Look at me; I didn't get drowned. Moreover, he isn't
a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he's bound to come back.
There's nothing to prevent him coming back...."

His eyes began to wander.

"To-morrow."

She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on
the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in
the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face
on having secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. The rest of the
town, he confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly queer.
The way they looked at you--the way they talked to you! He had never got
on with any one in the place. Didn't like the people. He would not have
left his own country if it had not been clear that his son had taken a
fancy to Colebrook.

She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence;
crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her
dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of
mahogany-coloured hair. Her father was frankly carroty.

She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Captain Hagberd
vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one's
own fireside, she smiled a little, with her li