"You are very young," I said, "to marry any one for any other reason
save the only true one. Some day there might be some one else."

She watched the flight of a seagull for a few moments--watched it till
its wings shone like burnished silver as it lit upon the sun-gilded sea.

"I do not think so," she said, dreamily. "I have never fancied myself
caring very much for any one. It is not easy, you know, for some of
us."

"And for some," I murmured, "it is too easy."

She looked at me curiously, but she had no suspicion as to the meaning
of my words.

"I want you to tell me something," she said, in a few minutes. "Have
you any other reason beyond this for objecting to my marriage with
Colonel Ray?"

"If I have," I answered slowly, "I cannot tell it you. It is his
secret, not mine."

"You are mysterious!" she remarked.

"If I am," I objected, "you must remember that you are asking me strange
questions."

"Colonel Ray is too honest," she said, thoughtfully, "to keep anything
from me which I ought to know."

I changed the conversation. After all I was a fool to have blundered
into it. We talked of other and lighter things. I exerted myself to
shake off the depression against which I had been struggling all the
morning. By degrees I think we both forgot some part of our troubles.
We walked home across the sandhills, climbing gradually higher and
higher, until we reached the cliffs. On all sides of us the coming
change in the seasons seemed to be vigorously asserting itself. The
plovers were crying over the freshly-turned ploughed fields, a whole
world of wild birds and insects seemed to have imparted a sense of
movement and life to what only a few days ago had been a land of
desolation, a country silent and winterbound. Colour was asserting
itself in all manner of places--in the green of the sprouting grass, the
shimmer of the sun upon the sea-stained sands, in the silvery blue of
the Braster creeks. Lady Angela drew a long breath of content as we
paused for a moment at the summit of the cliffs.

"And you wonder," she murmured, "that I left London for this!"

"Yes, I still wonder," I answered. "The beauties of this place are for
the lonely--I mean the lonely in disposition. For you life in the busy
places should just be opening all her fascinations. It is only when one
is disappointed in the more human life that one comes back to Nature."

"Perhaps then," she said, a little vaguely, "I too must be suffering
fr