He spoke so eagerly, and with such perfect temper, that I was ashamed of my momentary outburst. I shook hands with him cordially at the gate, and walked back slowly, looking at the heavy bank of fog lying in the east over which the moon was peering, and thinking of my mother, of Helen, perhaps a little of Georgy, although my heart was swelling with anger toward her still: so I told myself again and again. Yet how beautiful she was, with a new and bewildering tenderness in her manner! What had softened her? Was it suffering? When I returned to the parlor she had gone up stairs, tired with her excursion, I heard, and longing for a night's rest. I sat down by my mother, and we talked until midnight, while Helen sang ballads to her father in the next room in a rare contralto voice which had gained strength and richness since I heard it last. When, finally, Mr. Floyd--who always put off going to bed as a final necessity--allowed me to go up stairs, I found inside my dressing-case a folded paper on which these lines were written: "The prettiest hour of the day at The Headlands is at seven o'clock in the morning, down among the rocks." I should have felt no doubt whose hand had put the notelet there even if it had failed to breathe the perfume of violets, which no one who knew Georgy Lenox could hesitate to recognize. CHAPTER XVI. It was full two o'clock before I began to think of sleeping, but nevertheless I was on the rocks next morning at seven; and my punctuality was rewarded by the sight of Miss Lenox walking on the shore in a white dress. I clambered down and joined her before she seemed aware of my presence: then she turned and laughed softly in my face. "What an early riser you are!" she exclaimed. "You have brought excellent habits home from the lazy Old World." "But it would be such a pity to miss 'the prettiest hour of the day'!" I retorted quickly. "Were you surprised to meet me last night?" she asked. "Perhaps so. I had at least not expected it. I was in Belfield on Wednesday, and supposed that you were there." "You could easily have found out my whereabouts if you had called upon mamma. I should not have expected you to be in Belfield without going near our house." "Mrs. Lenox has too often snubbed me in my boyhood for me to count upon her grace now," I returned. "But I hope your mother is very well." But it was very droll to me that I had embarked upon something like an adventure for the sake of talking about old Mrs. Lenox. Still, Miss Georgy was well worth coming out to see with the flush of healthy sleep still upon cheek and lip and the morning light in her eyes. "Mamma is well," said she soberly. "Poor papa too: though he is worked to death, he is still quite well." "What does he do, then?" I asked. I knew that he was one of the book-keepers at the factories, but I wanted her to be the first to speak Jack's name.