w of the rock with the face veiled
in darkness, she seemed to hear the whisper of its words: "I am here. Do
not think to escape. I will have you yet."

Among the fisher-folk of that part of the coast it was known as the Moon
Rock. The old Cornish women had a tradition that when a fishing-boat
failed to return to that bay of storms, the spirit of the drowned man
would rise to the surface and answer his wife if she hailed him from the
shore. It was a rite and solemn ceremony, now fallen into decay. There was
a story of one young wife who, getting no answer, left her desolate
cottage at midnight and swam out to the Moon Rock at high tide. She had
scrambled up its slippery sides and called her husband from the summit.
She had called and called his name until he came. In the morning they were
found--the wife, and the husband who had been called from the depth of the
sea, floating together in one of the sea caverns at the base of the Moon
Rock, their white faces tangled in the red seaweed which streaked the
green surging water like blood.

Sisily knew this story, and believed it to be true. Sometimes, when the
moon lingered on the black glistening surface of the Moon Rock, she
fancied she could see a misty fluttering figure on the rock, and hear it
calling ... calling. She would sit motionless at her window, straining her
ears for the reply. After a time the response would come faintly from the
sea, at first far out, then sounding louder and clearer as the spirit of
the husband guided his drowned body back to his wife's arms. When it
sounded close to the rock the evanescent figure on the summit would vanish
to join the spirit of her husband in the churning waters at the base. Then
the face of the Moon Rock seemed to smile, and the smile was so cruel that
Sisily would turn from the window with a shudder, covering her face with
her hands.

Her strange upbringing may have contributed to such morbid fancies. In his
monstrous preoccupation with a single idea Robert Turold had neglected his
duty to his daughter. She counted for nothing in his scheme of life, and
there were periods when he seemed to be unconscious of her existence. She
had been allowed to grow up with very little education or training. She
had passed her childhood and girlhood in remote parts of England, without
companions, and nobody to talk to except her mother and Thalassa, who
accompanied the family everywhere. She loved her mother, but her love was
embittered