They met often--quite by accident, of course--on the moor and elsewhere. Tyrrel, for his part, shrank somewhat timidly from the sister of the boy, for his share in whose death he so bitterly reproached himself; yet he couldn't quite drag himself off whenever he found himself in Cleer's presence. She bound him as by a spell. He was profoundly attracted to her. There was something about the pretty Cornish girl so frank, so confiding, in one word, so magnetic, that when once he came near her he couldn't tear himself away as he felt he ought to. Yet he could see very well, none the less, it was for Eustace Le Neve that she watched most eagerly, with the natural interest of a budding girl in the man who takes her pure maiden fancy. Tyrrel allowed with a sigh that this was well indeed; for how could he ever dream, now he knew who she was, of marrying young Michael Trevennack's sister? One afternoon the two friends were returning from a long ramble across the open moor, when, near a little knoll of bare and weathered rock that rose from a circling belt of Cornish heath, they saw Cleer by herself, propped against the huge boulders, with her eyes fixed intently on a paper-covered novel. She looked up and smiled as they approached; and the young men, turning aside from their ill-marked path, came over and stood by her. They talked for awhile about the ordinary nothings of society small-talk, till by degrees Cleer chanced accidentally to bring the conversation round to something that had happened to her mother and herself a year or two since in Malta. Le Neve snatched at the word; for he was eager to learn all he could about the Trevennacks' movements, so deeply had Cleer already impressed her image on his susceptible nature. "And when do you go back there?" he asked, somewhat anxiously. "I suppose your father's leave is for a week or two only." "Oh, dear, no; we don't go back at all, thank heaven," Cleer answered, with a sunny smile. "I can't bear exile, Mr. Le Neve, and I never cared one bit for living in Malta. But this year, fortunately, papa's going to be transferred for a permanence to England; he's to have charge of a department that has something or other to do with provisioning the Channel Squadron; I don't quite understand what; but anyhow, he'll have to be running about between Portsmouth and Plymouth, and I don't know where else; and mamma and I will have to take a house for ourselves in London." Le Neve's face showed his pleasure. "That's well," he answered, briskly. "Then you won't be quite lost! I mean, there'll be some chance at least when you go away from here of one's seeing you sometimes."