The summer was slowly passing. At a small and obscure seaside place on the East coast Mrs. Cumberland was located. She had engaged part of one of the few good houses there--houses that let at an enormous price in the season to visitors--and lived in it with Ellen Adair, and her maid to wait on her. Not Jelly this time, but the housemaid Ann. The interior of Mrs. Cumberland\'s own house at Dallory was being painted during her absence. She had deemed it well to leave Jelly in charge: and brought Ann instead.

They had been in this place, Eastsea, for some weeks now; and Ellen privately believed that this sojourn was never coming to an end. Any thing more wearisome than it was to her, could not have been found. Arthur Bohun was in London at his uncle\'s, where he had been staying for some time. It was several weeks since he and Ellen had met: to her it seemed as many months. James Bohun was still ill, but fluctuated much; at one time appearing to be beyond recovery, at another as if he were almost well again. He would not part with Arthur; Sir Nash said he must not think of leaving. Under the circumstances, Arthur did not see his way clear to getting away.

Another person was fluctuating. And that was Mrs. Cumberland. Her complaint, connected with the heart, was one of those that may snap life suddenly, or allow it to be prolonged for years. That she was gradually growing worse, was undoubted; but it was by almost imperceptible degrees. No change could be noted from day to day; it was only by comparing her present state with what it had been three, six, or twelve months before, that the change could be seen. Sometimes, for days together, she would feel very ill, be quite unable to quit her room; and again she would have an interval of ease, almost of seeming recovery, and walk and drive out daily. Dr. Rane had come over twice to see his mother: staying on each occasion only a few hours. His opinion was, that she might yet, with care, live for years; and probably many years. At the same time, he knew that there could be no certainty of it.

It was during this sojourn at Eastsea that Mrs. Cumberland received news from Mr. Adair. He wrote in answer to Mrs. Cumberland\'s letter--the first of the two letters already alluded to--wherein she had spoken of the probability of Ellen\'s being sought in marriage by a gentleman in every way desirable, but in which she had omitted, probably from inadvertence, to mention the gentleman\'s name. Mr. Adair\'s answer, now received, was to the effect that--fully relying on Mrs. Cumberland\'s judgment--he could not desire better for his daughter than that so suitable a marriage should be entered into; and accorded it his cordial consent.

But this involved a most unhappy contretemps: of which no one as yet was, or could be, conscious. That first letter of Mrs. Cumberland\'s had alluded to Mr. Graves: she imagined this consent to apply to Arthur Bohun. It takes time, as every one knows, for a letter to reach Australia from England and an answer to be returned. Whether, during those intervening weeks, Mrs. Cumberland actually forgot that her first letter had applied to Mr. Graves: or whether in her invalid state, memory had grown confused, and she remembered only the last letter, must ever remain a question. Certain it was, that she accepted this present approbation of Mr. Adair\'s as applying to Arthur Bohun. It might be, that she had altogether forgotten having written about Mr. Graves.

With her usual reticence, she said nothing to Ellen Adair. Not a word. Time enough for that when Arthur Bohun should speak--if he ever did speak. She held the consent ready for use if necessity ever required it: and was at ease.

"Ellen, how listless you seem!"

Ellen Adair looked up, faintly blushing at the abrupt charge, which came from Mrs. Cumberland.

"Listless!" exclaimed Ellen.

"My dear, it is nothing less. I don\'t think you care for Eastsea."

"Not very much. At least--it is rather dull."

"Well, I suppose you can only find it so; confined to the house half my time, as I am. At Niton you had often Captain Bohun to go out with; now you have to go out alone."

Ellen turned away, a soft blush rising to her face at the remembrance of Niton, "Shall you be going home soon, do you think, Mrs. Cumberland?" she asked.

"Oh dear no. I had a note from Jelly this morning, and she says the house is not half ready. Workpeople are so lazy! Once you get them into a place you can\'t get them out again. But if Jelly were ready for us I should still not go. This air is doing me good on the whole. Perhaps I shall remain the winter here."

Ellen\'s heart fell within her. All the autumn in this place, that verily seemed to her the fag end of the world, and all the winter! Should she ever again get the chance of seeing her heart\'s love, Arthur Bohun? And he?--perhaps he was forgetting her.

"Do you feel well enough to come out, Mrs. Cumberland?"

"No. I am sorry, Ellen, but you must go alone. Put on your things at once, child: the afternoon will be passing."

Ellen sighed. It was of no moment to her whether she went out or stayed in: she obeyed mechanically, and went forth. Quite alone. Generally speaking Ann attended her, but the servant was this afternoon wanted by her mistress.

The sunshine played on the clear blue sea, ever changing its lovely hues, as the light autumn clouds floated above it in the sky. Ellen Adair sat in a sheltered spot and watched it. It was her favourite seat: one hewn out of the rocks, and apparently frequented only by herself, as she had never yet been disturbed in it. Excepting the small strip of beach before her, nothing was to be seen from it but sea and sky. Overhead, she could hear the children\'s voices at play: the tide below was coming in with gentle monotony. Ellen had a book with her, and she had her diary; she had read a few pages in the one, she had written some lines in pencil in the other: and so the hours passed, and she was utterly dreary. The weary day was only the type of the other weary days that at present made up the sum total of her life.

"Will it ever come to an end?" she murmured, having watched a tiny pleasure-boat shoot past and disappear, leaving her to her silent solitude. "Shall we ever get back to Dallory Ham, and--the friends who live there? I suppose a winter might be got through and survived in this place, but----"

A gentleman in deep mourning walking on the strip of beach, looking to right and left. Ellen\'s thoughts were summarily ended, and she rose with a faint cry: the cry of intense joy that in its sound is so near akin to that of exquisite pain.

For it was no other than Captain Arthur Bohun. He had not heard it; but he saw her; it was for her he had been searching: and he turned with an outstretched hand. For a moment she felt utterly bewildered, half doubting the reality of the vision. But oh yes, it was he; it was he! The sea and sky, the rocks, and the monotony--all had changed into paradise.

"How do you do, Ellen?"

Nothing more than this commonplace greeting was spoken. They stood in silence, their hands clasped. His lips were quivering slightly, proving how ardent was the feeling that stirred him at their renewed meeting; Ellen, blushing and paling by turns, was agitated almost to pain. Sitting down quietly by her side on the ledge of rock he accounted for his unexpected appearance. On his arrival at Eastsea that afternoon, he had gone at once to call at Mrs. Cumberland\'s. Ann said her mistress was lying down, and that Miss Adair was on the beach.

"Did you think I was never coming to see you, Ellen? I thought so. I could not get away from my uncle\'s whilst James was so ill."

"Is he--dead?" hesitated Ellen, looking pointedly at the black clothes.

"Oh no. It is a cousin of Sir Nash\'s and of my father\'s who is dead: a very old man who has lived for years in the South of France. James Bohun is very much better."

"I thought, by the deep mourning, it must be."

"Is it deep? I suppose it looks so. I should not wish it otherwise in the present instance, for the good old man has been generous to me."

They fell into silence, each feeling the rapture of the other\'s presence, after the prolonged separation, as something more than human. So intense was it that Ellen, at least, might have been content to die in it there and then. The sea changed its beautiful colours, the sky seemed to smile on them, the children played overhead, a silvery flute from some unseen boat in the distance was softly playing. No: Eden could never have been sweeter than this.

"What have you been doing, all this time by yourself at Eastsea?" he at length asked her.

"Very much what I am doing now, I think--sitting here to watch the sea," she answered. "There has been nothing else to do. It was always dull."

"Has Mrs. Cumberland had any visitors?"

"Dr. Rane has been here twice. He gives a bad account of things at Dallory. The strike shows no signs of coming to an end; and the men are in want."

"So Dick says. I get a letter from him sometimes."

A great amount of talking, this. The tide turned; a big steamer went by in the distance.

"Do you hear that, Ellen?"

A man\'s soft tenor voice had struck up a love-song overhead: "Ellen Adair," Robin Adair, as the world more often has it. Arthur Bohun used to hear it sung as "Ellin Adair," when he was recovering from his wound in Ireland; the Irish insisted on it that so it was in the original song;............