He had thought of her very often of late, and indeed had been quite eager to make his visit to Pen’yllan, for no other reason, he told himself, than because he should see her there, and hear her sweet young voice again. And now he had come, and she had welcomed him, and they were walking over the sands, side by side. And yet—and yet—Was it possible that he felt restless and dissatisfied with his own emotions? Was it possible that the rapture he had tried to imagine, in London, was not so rapturous here, in Pen’yllan? Could it be that, after all, he was still only admiring her affectionately, in a brotherly way, as he had always done—admiring and reverencing her, gently, as the dearest, prettiest, truest girl he had ever known? Long ago, when, at the time of that old folly, he remembered a certain tremulous bliss he had experienced when he had been permitted to spend an hour with the beloved object, he remembered the absolute pangs of joy with which one glance from certain great, 124 cruel, dark eyes had filled him; he remembered how the sound of a girlish voice had possessed the power to set every drop of blood in his veins beating. He was as calm as ever he had been in his life, as he strolled on with Georgie Esmond; he could meet her bright eyes without even the poor mockery of a tremor. He had felt nothing but calm pleasure even when he grasped her soft hand in greeting. Would it always be thus? Was it best that it should be so? Perhaps! And yet, in the depths of his heart lay a strange yearning for just one touch of the old delirium—just one pang of the old, bitter-sweet pain.

“There!” exclaimed Georgie, ending his reverie for him. “There she is, standing on the rocks. Don’t you see that dark-blue ribbon, fluttering?”

It was curious enough that his heart should give such a startled bound, when his eyes fell upon the place to which Georgie directed his attention. But, then again, perhaps, it was no wonder, considering how familiar the scene before him was. Years ago he had been wont to come to this very spot, and find a slight figure standing in that very nook of rocks; a slight girl’s figure, clad in a close-fitting suit of sailor-blue, a cloud of blown-about hair falling to the 125 waist, and dark-blue ribbons fluttering from a rough-and-ready little sailor-hat of straw. And there was the very figure, and the very accompaniments; the dress, the abundant tossed-about hair, the fluttering ribbon, the sea, the sky, the shore. He was so silent, for a moment, that Georgie spoke to him again, after a quick glance at his changed expression.

“Don’t you see that it is Lisbeth?” she said, laughing. “She is very quiet, but she is alive, nevertheless. We shall reach her in a minute. She is watching the gulls, I think. I thought we should find her here. This is our favorite resting-place.”

Lisbeth was evidently either watching something, or in a very thoughtful mood. She did not move, or even appear to be conscious of any approaching presence, until Georgie called to her, “Lisbeth! Lisbeth!” and then she looked round with a start.

“What!” she said. “Is it you two? How you startled me! You came like ghosts! And Mr. Anstruthers,” glancing at Hector, “looks like one. He is so pale!”

“I have seen a ghost,” was his reply.

“I am glad to hear it,” said Lisbeth, coolly. “Ghosts make a place interesting.”

She is so like herself, so self-possessed, and 126 wholly Lisbeth-like, that she wakens him completely from the sort of stupor into which he had for a moment fallen. She holds out her hand for him to shake, and favors him with an unmoved, not too enthusiastic smile. She is polite and reasonably hospitable in her greeting, but she does not seem to be overwhelmed with the power of her emotions.

“Sit down,” she says, “and let us rest a while. We have plenty of time to reach home before dinner; and if we hadn’t, it would not matter much. My aunts are used to being kept waiting. They are too amiable to be iron-hearted about rules.”

So they sit down, and then, despite the reality of her manner, Anstruthers finds himself in a dream again. As Lisbeth talks, her voice carries him back to the past. Unconsciously she has fallen into an attitude which is as familiar as all the rest, her hands folded on her knees, her face turned seaward. The scent of the sea is in the air; the sound of its murmurs in his ears. The color on the usually clear, pale cheek is the color he used to admire with such lover-like extravagance—a pure pink tint, bright and rare. She seems to have gone back to her seventeen years, and he has gone back with her. 127

When at last they rise to return, he is wandering in this dream still, and he is very silent as they walk home. As they enter the garden gate, they see Miss Clarissa standing at the window, watching for them, just as she had used to do, to Lisbeth’s frequent irritation, in the olden days. And Lisbeth, pausing at the gate, gathered a large red rose.

“The roses are in bloom,” she says, “just as they were when I went away with Mrs. Despard. I could almost persuade myself that I had never been away at all.”

That velvet-leaved r............