It was one of Lisbeth’s chief wonders, that Georgie, who was so soft of heart, and ready with affection, should have held her own so long against so agreeable a multitude of adorers. Certainly, if she had lived through any little romance, she had kept her secret well. She did not look like a love-lorn young lady when she came down, the next morning, fresh and rosy, and prepared to explore Pen’yllan in all its fastnesses. It was exhilarating to see her; and the Misses Tregarthyn were delighted beyond bounds. She made a pilgrimage through half the up-and-down-hill little streets in the village, and, before dinner, had managed to drag Lisbeth a mile along the shore, against a stiff breeze, which blew their long, loose hair about, and tinted their cheeks brilliantly. Lisbeth followed her with an amused wonder at her enthusiasm, mingled with discontent at her own indifference. It was she who ought to have been in raptures, and she was not in raptures at all. Had she no natural feeling whatever? Any other woman would have felt a sentimental tenderness for the place which had been her earliest home. They had found a comfortable nook behind a cluster of sheltering rocks, and were sitting on the sand, when Lisbeth arrived at this stage of thought. The place was an old haunt of hers, and Hector Anstruthers had often followed her there in their boy and girl days; and the sight of the familiar stretch of sea and sand irritated her somehow. She picked up a shell, and sent it skimming away toward the water, with an impatient gesture. “Georgie,” she said, “I should like to know what you see in Pen’yllan to please you so.” “Everything,” said Georgie. “And then, somehow, I seem to know it. I think its chief attraction is, that you lived here so long.” Lisbeth picked up another shell, and sent it skimming after the other. “What a girl you are!” she said. “It is always your love and your heart that are touched. You are all heart. You love people, and you love everything that belongs to them: their homes, their belongings, their relations. It is not so with me; it never was. You are like what Hector Anstruthers was, when I first knew him. Bah!” with a shrug of her shoulders. “How fond the foolish fellow was of Aunt Hetty, and Aunt Millicent, and Aunt Clarissa.” Her tongue had slipped, just as Georgie’s had done the night before. For the moment she forgot herself entirely, and only remembered that old sentimental affection of her boyish lover; that affection for her spinster relatives, which, in the past, had impressed her as being half troublesome and half absurd. CHAPTER XI. A CONFESSION. Georgie turned to her, taking sudden courage. “Lisbeth,” she said, “you never told me much about your acquaintance with Hector Anstruthers. I wonder how it was. You knew him very well, it seems.” “I wish,” broke out Lisbeth, almost angrily, “that I had never known him at all.” The faithful heart, beating in the breast of the girl at her side, leaped nervously.