She remembered getting out of the train at the wayside station, the nearest station touched by the railroad, for St. Margaret’s Bay. Her heart was beating rather fast. It was eighteen years since she had seen Hugh. Should she recognize him? He would not know her. When he last came home she was a girl of seventeen. The thought of her present age struck her with a shock of dismay. There were only two people on the platform. A big burly man, tall and bearded, and beside him a girl in a white serge dress. Hugh and his wife! “I am Anne,” she stammered, going up to them. Hugh put his arms round her with his old impulsive roughness, and then held her away from him. “Why, you’ve grown, Anne!” he cried gaily. “You were such a little thing! So slight, I mean. Darling, this is Anne. Isn’t she a damned fine woman?” His old laugh rang out boyishly, as Anne turned shyly to his wife. She was very small, very daintily made, very prettily dressed. Her face, despite her twenty-five years, was still babyish with its large blue eyes and rings of soft hair round a childish forehead. She took her sister-in-law’s hand and smiled, but even then, Anne did not miss the quick glance that scrutinized her quizzically from head to foot. From that moment, she knew that for Alice she was merely a dowdily dressed woman; an old maid, some one to be treated with patronizing kindliness. They drove from the station to the cottage, which was almost upon the seashore. “Hugh loves the sea. He can’t be happy away from it, can you, darling?” Alice asked, slipping her hand into his, as they entered the little parlour where tea was spread. “Now Anne, tell us all about it!” exclaimed Hugh as they sat down. “Bless my soul, it’s seventeen or eighteen years since I saw you. What have you been doing all this time?” A sudden paralyzing blankness fell upon Anne’s mind. What had she been doing? For thirteen years after her brother’s last departure, she had lived in the little house in Tufton Street, managing the house work, anxiously counting her weekly allowance for fear that with all her pains, both ends could not be made to meet. She had nursed a hopeless invalid, and tried to bear his exacting temper with patience. For the last five of the eighteen years she had read books, and worked in the garden. There was nothing to tell them. Instinctively she felt that to these people who belonged to practical life, who lived and loved, who were in the mainstream of human activity, her world of books meant nothing. The colour rushed to her cheeks, and left them white. “I--I have done nothing at all,” she stammered. “You know I have been living with Mrs. Burbage for five years? She’s very kind. But she’s almost an invalid, so we’re--we’re very quiet. Tell me about yourself, Hugh. Things are always happening to you.” “Well, _this_ has happened to me,” he returned with a laugh, slipping his arm round his wife’s shoulder. “The best thing that ever happened in my life.”