“Not at all, I feel strong now.” Her eyes and cheeks were indeed very bright; she leaned forward and gazed eagerly around. “This Weymouth seems familiar to you, Miss Valery?” “Yes; we used to come here every summer--Mr. and Mrs. Harper and the children and I, until she died. She was as good as a mother, or an elder sister”--here Anne hesitated, but repeated the words--“like an elder sister--to me. We were all very happy in those times. It is a great blessing, Agatha, to have had a happy childhood. Where did you spend yours?” Agatha looked uneasy. “Chiefly in London--I told you.” “But before then, when you were a very little girl?” “I do not know. Don't let us talk about that.” “Not if you do not wish it.” Anne's eyes, which had watched her closely, turned away, and after a few minutes were riveted on a line of blue sea sweeping round a distant headland, and curving off to the horizon. As she looked she became very pale, and shivered. Agatha hardly noticed her, being so busy examining the new regions into which they now entered--the ordinary High Street of an ordinary country town. The sea view had vanished. Suddenly the carriage turned a corner, and they burst upon the shore of Weymouth Bay. A great, blue, glittering bay, with two white headlands shutting it in; the tide running high, the waves dashing themselves furiously against the sea-wall of the esplanade, breaking into showers of spray, and curling back into the foaming whirl below. Agatha started, and put her hands before her eyes. “I know that sight--I remember that sound. Oh! where is this place? why did you bring me here?” At this cry Miss Valery, roused from her momentary fit of abstraction, took hold of Agatha's hand. The girl was trembling violently. “My dear, I did not expect this, or you should not have come here. This is Weymouth. Now do you remember?” “How should I? Was I ever here before?” She peered from under her hand at the sparkling sea. “No, it is not like that sea; it is too bright. Yet I hear the same roll against the same wall. It is very foolish, but I wish we could get away.” “Presently,” said Anne's soothing voice. “We must drive along this shore, and then we will get out at an inn I know, and rest.” Her manner, her expression, as she fixed her eyes full upon her, struck Agatha with an indescribable feeling. She looked eagerly at Miss Valery, trying to read in that worn face some likeness to the one which had impressed her childish memory with almost angelic beauty. “Tell me--you say you have been often here--did you ever one stormy day follow a ship that was outward bound? You were in a little boat, and the ship was standing out to sea, round that point--and”-- She stopped, for Anne's face was livid to the very lips. Agatha forgot her own question and its purport. “Stop the carriage. Let me hold you. Dear--dear Miss Valery, you are worn out--you are fainting.”