Mollie was standing in the porch of the cottage as she read this. It was immediately after breakfast. The postman could be seen in the middle distance, climbing the stile on his way to Newsome's. Joan was upstairs, getting the children ready for the shore. Mollie thrust the letter into her breast. If Joan knew that the postman had been she would come flying downstairs, and in any case Mollie did not wish to be seen reading a letter. This from Audrey Cunningham was all there was for her. For Joan there was nothing at all. Quietly she slipped into the cottage, picked up a floppy print sunbonnet, and slipped noiselessly out again. The back of the cottage had no windows. Like a malefactor she skirted the palings of the little front garden and gained the security of the back. But even this was not far enough. The path up the field led to the Coast-guard Station, and, with one furtive glance behind her, she took it. She would finish Audrey's letter there. Mollie Esdaile is still a young woman, but she looked every minute of her age that morning. She had not slept. The room adjoining hers was Joan's, and the wall between them might just as well not have existed, so little a barrier had it been to the restless mental ticking of the girl on the other side of it. A soft and tortured toss, then the creaking of the bed, then the sounds of Joan moving about her room; the striking of a match, a long silence, and then the creaking of the bed again--all night it had gone on. Mollie had not gone to her; what had there been to do or say? A hundred times she had promised, as if it had lain in her power, that there should be a letter in the morning. None had come. She felt a coward. She simply could not face Joan. There was a merry morning wind, that ruffled the fleeces on the sheep's backs and set the halliards of the Coast-guard's mast cracking and rattling. Mollie tied the strings of the print sunbonnet under her plump chin and walked with her head a little averted in order to see round the print blinker. Beyond the waving grass-heads the sea appeared, a wide silver glitter. You cannot see the shore from that hill. The sands and the mile-long rollers lie far below that cliff's edge over which the men are let down by ropes to gather the eggs from the awful ledges. Then, in the little sunken way that runs down to the Rocket-house, she sat down and took out the letter again. "I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox Street for Monty and myself after all. Our engagement is not definitely broken off, but I can't stand things as they are, and am back in Oakley Street again. They say I can stay on, but I may have to pay a little more. Monty is still at the studio." "I _knew_ it!" broke from Mollie with soft conviction. "I knew that if Philip stayed that wedding would be put off! I told him so----" Frowning, she turned to the letter again.