"To the old place, Nell," he repeated, looking at her with criticising eyes of kind affection, and thinking she looked as though she stood in need of physical and moral backing; "I always think of you here, looking out to sea, just under Betty Cam's chair----" he nodded his head backwards to the scaur of tumbled rocks. "If you get looking so long, Nell, you will be seeing ghostly things--like she did. She was your ancestress, you know, and it isn't safe----" He spoke tentatively, but she evaded him. "You said you had a question," she asked; "what is it?" "Only if you have room at the Keep?" She laid her hand on his in swift reproof--"Was there ever a time when there was not room?" He smiled. "True; but unfortunately I've--I've a second self now." "Ned!" She stared at him. "Oh Ned! How could you--without a word! Who is she?" "It is a he, my dear. We collided together and found out our respective names were the same. But of that anon. And there is a Scotch doctor too--a rattling good fellow, one Peter Ramsay, whom we picked up--but of that also anon. Meanwhile these are at the 'Crooked Ewe' regaling themselves, and--well! I can't leave them, you see, for they're my guests, but--but we could dine with the _chauffeurs_, you know." "Don't be silly, Ned! Of course you must come. There's still room in the ruins for the family--and _you_ won't mind----" She broke off suddenly, and looked out to sea. "Tired, Nell?" he asked quietly. "How you fuss, my dear cousin!" "Who could help fussing?" she said without looking at him. "We could live so comfortably, father and I, on what we have got, if it were not for this craze of his to make money for me. Ah, Ned! I wish you had never lent him that fifteen thousand." It was nearer twenty-five thousand, but that fact lay lightly on Ned Blackborough's mind. "I believe it to be an excellent investment," he remarked coolly, "though I own I didn't know what he wanted it for at the time." "And you don't know now?" she broke in passionately. "There it stands--despicable utterly--facing the sea--that sea." She pointed to it appealingly. Ned looked out to the clear horizon, so definite yet so undefined, where a liner, after taking its bearings from the lighthouse far away to the west, was steering straight up Channel. It seemed to glide evenly between sea and sky, and yet here the thunder of each wave filled the air with sound. Ay! a sea not to be safely faced by anything despicable. "You are letting this beast of an hotel get on your mind, Nell," he said, after a pause. "After all, half the white and coloured cliffs of Old England are so desecrated----" "Don't excuse it," she interrupted almost fiercely; "it's inexcusable. When I think what Jeff would have said--Jeff who loved every stone--dear old Jeff----" She broke off and hid her face in her hands. "Curse South Africa!" said Ned under his breath.