It was to Pulpit Rock that the two cousins bent their way. The Cliffs were even lonelier now than they had been when Candace first visited them. There were no bathers in the surf; no carriages were drawn up on the higher part of the beach, and the road leading around Easton's Point showed only a few scattered figures and one solitary horseman on its entire length. Here and there along the windings of the Cliff Walk a single walker appeared, dark against the brightness of the sky, or two girls were seen pacing the smooth gravel, with fluttering dresses, and hair blown by the soft October wind. The sea was as beautiful in color as ever, but it had changed with the change of the season. The blue seemed more rarefied, the opalescent tints more intense; deep purple reflections lay in the shadows made by the rocky points, and there was a bright clearness of atmosphere quite unlike the dream-like mistiness of the summer. The cousins sat side by side on the big rock, just where they had sat on that June day which seemed to Candace so long ago. Gertrude was no longer critical or scornful. She sat a little farther back than Candace, and from time to time glanced at her side-face with a sort of puzzled expression. Cannie, happening to turn, caught the look; it embarrassed her a little, and to hide the embarrassment she began to talk. "Did you know that Cousin Kate is going to let me live with you always?" she asked. "Yes; mamma told me." "Isn't she good?" went on Candace, impulsively. "I can hardly believe yet that it is true. What makes you all so very, very kind to me, I can't think." "I haven't been particularly kind," said Gertrude, suddenly. "Candace,--I might as well say it at once, for it's been a good deal on my mind lately,--I wish you would forget how nasty I was when you first came to us." "Were you nasty?" said Candace, trying to speak lightly, but with a flush creeping into her face. [Illustration: THE CLIFFS. "I shall always love this rock," said Candace.--PAGE 281.] "Yes, I was; very nasty. I didn't care to have you come, in the first place; and I thought you seemed awkward and countrified, and I didn't like your clothes, and I was afraid the girls here would laugh at you. It was a mean sort of feeling, and the worst thing is that I didn't see that it was mean. I was ashamed of you; but now I am ashamed, dreadfully ashamed, of myself. I felt so much wiser and more knowing than you then; and yet when Georgie, my own sister, got into this dreadful trouble and came to me for help, I had none to give her. I was as much a coward as she was. I gave her bad advice; and it was you, whom I laughed at and was unkind to, who saw what she ought to do, and was brave and really helped. When I think of it all, I feel as if I couldn't forgive myself."