The sunshine played on the clear blue sea, ever changing its lovely hues, as the light autumn clouds floated above it in the sky. Ellen Adair sat in a sheltered spot and watched it. It was her favourite seat: one hewn out of the rocks, and apparently frequented only by herself, as she had never yet been disturbed in it. Excepting the small strip of beach before her, nothing was to be seen from it but sea and sky. Overhead, she could hear the children's voices at play: the tide below was coming in with gentle monotony. Ellen had a book with her, and she had her diary; she had read a few pages in the one, she had written some lines in pencil in the other: and so the hours passed, and she was utterly dreary. The weary day was only the type of the other weary days that at present made up the sum total of her life. "Will it ever come to an end?" she murmured, having watched a tiny pleasure-boat shoot past and disappear, leaving her to her silent solitude. "Shall we ever get back to Dallory Ham, and--the friends who live there? I suppose a winter _might_ be got through and survived in this place, but----" A gentleman in deep mourning walking on the strip of beach, looking to right and left. Ellen's thoughts were summarily ended, and she rose with a faint cry: the cry of intense joy that in its sound is so near akin to that of exquisite pain. For it was no other than Captain Arthur Bohun. He had not heard it; but he saw her; it was for her he had been searching: and he turned with an outstretched hand. For a moment she felt utterly bewildered, half doubting the reality of the vision. But oh yes, it was he; it was he! The sea and sky, the rocks, and the monotony--all had changed into paradise. "How do you do, Ellen?" Nothing more than this commonplace greeting was spoken. They stood in silence, their hands clasped. His lips were quivering slightly, proving how ardent was the feeling that stirred him at their renewed meeting; Ellen, blushing and paling by turns, was agitated almost to pain. Sitting down quietly by her side on the ledge of rock he accounted for his unexpected appearance. On his arrival at Eastsea that afternoon, he had gone at once to call at Mrs. Cumberland's. Ann said her mistress was lying down, and that Miss Adair was on the beach. "Did you think I was never coming to see you, Ellen? I thought so. I could not get away from my uncle's whilst James was so ill." "Is he--dead?" hesitated Ellen, looking pointedly at the black clothes. "Oh no. It is a cousin of Sir Nash's and of my father's who is dead: a very old man who has lived for years in the South of France. James Bohun is very much better." "I thought, by the deep mourning, it must be." "Is it deep? I suppose it looks so. I should not wish it otherwise in the present instance, for the good old man has been generous to me."