though the coast road wound on behind her, communicating by a rocky passage, almost like a stair, with the sands below. Lady Car seated herself upon the grass. She did not care even to sketch; all her old pursuits had dropped from her. She was content to sit still, with her eyes more often upon the wide line of the horizon than on any intermediate point, however attractive. There was a sort of luxury of the soul in that width of stainless silent air, which required nothing, not even thought, but filled her with a faint yet exquisite sense of calm. The peace of God--did she dare to call it so? Certainly it passed understanding. That she should sit in this beatitude in a calm so complete, with so many--oh, so many--things to make her anxious and to make her sad. Still so it was. She did not know how long she had sat there in that wide universe of sea and sky, when her attention was first called to voices underneath the ridge of rock. The sands beyond were on a lower level, and it might well be that people underneath might discuss the most private affairs without any thought of possible listeners above. Carry had heard the murmur of the voices for some time before she took any heed of them, or distinguished one from another. These tones she presently observed were very unlike the peace all around: there was a sound of conflict in them, and now and then a broken note as if the woman sobbed. For it was apparent at once that the two were a man and woman, and soon that there was some controversy between them. When Lady Car began to awaken out of her dream of calm to become aware of these two people below and the discussion or quarrel which was every moment increasing in intensity, she did not perhaps know how to make her presence known, or rather, perhaps, it was something in the sound of one of the voices which bewildered and confused her. At first she thought with a vague trouble it was a voice she knew. Then she started from her grassy seat with a horrible sensation, as if she were hearing over again, though not addressed to herself, one of those mocking, threatening, insulting floods of words which had once been the terror of her life. Torrance! Had she lived to hear him speak again? She had escaped from all imagination of him in this beautiful and distant scene. What was it that like a terrible wind of recollection, like an hour come back from the miserable past, made her hear his voice again?