It was curious enough that his heart should give such a startled bound, when his eyes fell upon the place to which Georgie directed his attention. But, then again, perhaps, it was no wonder, considering how familiar the scene before him was. Years ago he had been wont to come to this very spot, and find a slight figure standing in that very nook of rocks; a slight girl’s figure, clad in a close-fitting suit of sailor-blue, a cloud of blown-about hair falling to the waist, and dark-blue ribbons fluttering from a rough-and-ready little sailor-hat of straw. And there was the very figure, and the very accompaniments; the dress, the abundant tossed-about hair, the fluttering ribbon, the sea, the sky, the shore. He was so silent, for a moment, that Georgie spoke to him again, after a quick glance at his changed expression. “Don’t you see that it is Lisbeth?” she said, laughing. “She is very quiet, but she is alive, nevertheless. We shall reach her in a minute. She is watching the gulls, I think. I thought we should find her here. This is our favorite resting-place.” Lisbeth was evidently either watching something, or in a very thoughtful mood. She did not move, or even appear to be conscious of any approaching presence, until Georgie called to her, “Lisbeth! Lisbeth!” and then she looked round with a start. “What!” she said. “Is it you two? How you startled me! You came like ghosts! And Mr. Anstruthers,” glancing at Hector, “looks like one. He is so pale!” “I have seen a ghost,” was his reply. “I am glad to hear it,” said Lisbeth, coolly. “Ghosts make a place interesting.” She is so like herself, so self-possessed, and wholly Lisbeth-like, that she wakens him completely from the sort of stupor into which he had for a moment fallen. She holds out her hand for him to shake, and favors him with an unmoved, not too enthusiastic smile. She is polite and reasonably hospitable in her greeting, but she does not seem to be overwhelmed with the power of her emotions. “Sit down,” she says, “and let us rest a while. We have plenty of time to reach home before dinner; and if we hadn’t, it would not matter much. My aunts are used to being kept waiting. They are too amiable to be iron-hearted about rules.” So they sit down, and then, despite the reality of her manner, Anstruthers finds himself in a dream again. As Lisbeth talks, her voice carries him back to the past. Unconsciously she has fallen into an attitude which is as familiar as all the rest, her hands folded on her knees, her face turned seaward. The scent of the sea is in the air; the sound of its murmurs in his ears. The color on the usually clear, pale cheek is the color he used to admire with such lover-like extravagance--a pure pink tint, bright and rare. She seems to have gone back to her seventeen years, and he has gone back with her.