t now, you will laugh at the old, half-forgotten joke."

Well, there was no laughing at the joke just then, for the girl burst
into tears, and in the midst of that she hastily pressed his hand and
hurried away. He watched her go round the rocks, to the cleft leading
down to the harbor. There she was rejoined by her sister, and the two
of them went slowly along the path of broken slate, with the green
hill above, the blue water below, and the fair sunshine all around
them. Many a time he recalled afterward--and always with an increasing
weight at his heart--how sombre seemed to him that bright October day
and the picturesque opening of the coast leading in to Eglosilyan. For
it was the last glimpse of Wenna Rosewarne that he was to have for
many a day, and a sadder picture was never treasured up in a man's
memory.

"Oh, Wenna, what have you said to him that you tremble so?" Mabyn
asked.

"I have bid him good-bye--that is all."

"Not for always?"

"Yes, for always."

"And he is going away again, then?"

"Yes, as a young man should. Why should he stop here to make himself
wretched over impossible fancies? He will go out into the world, and
he has splendid health and spirits, and he will forget all this."

"And you--you are anxious to forget it all too?"

"Would it not be better? What good can come of dreaming? Well, I have
plenty of work to do: that is well."

Mabyn was very much inclined to cry: all her beautiful visions of the
future happiness of her sister had been rudely dispelled--all her
schemes and machinations had gone for nothing. There only remained to
her, in the way of consolation, the fact that Wenna still wore the
sapphire ring that Harry Trelyon had sent her.

"And what will his mother think of you?" said Mabyn as a last
argument, "when she finds you have sent him away altogether--to go
into the army and go abroad, and perhaps die of yellow fever, or be
shot by the Sepoys or Caffres?"

"She would have hated me if I had married him," said Wenna simply.

"Oh, Wenna, how dare you say such a thing?" Mabyn cried. "What do you
mean by it?"

"Would a lady in her position like her only son to marry the daughter
of an innkeeper?" Wenna asked rather indifferently: indeed, her
thoughts were elsewhere.

"I tell you there's no one in the world she loves like you--I can see
it every time she comes down for you--and she believes, and I believe
too, that you have changed Mr. Trelyon's way of talking and