"Do you think so?" she responded gravely. "That is high praise." He laughed. "Have you seen that gruesome dungeon?" "Not properly. I am on my way to it now." He turned to walk with her, and they leant over the railing looking down on the blackness below. A few feet from the top of the dungeon a magnificent hart's-tongue fern sprang from a crevice, and curled its delicate, pale-green fronds over the dank, dark stone. "How lovely!" said Mona. "Yes," he said. "And it is not only the force of contrast. Its gloomy surroundings really do make it more beautiful." "Yes," said Mona relentlessly; "but it is not what Nature meant it to be." "True," he replied. "Yet who would wish it transplanted!" Presently he turned away, and looked over the rough blue sea. "This place depresses me unspeakably," he said. "It reminds me of a book of 'martyr stories' I had when I was a child. I have a mental picture now of a family sitting round a blazing fire, and saying in awestruck whispers, 'It's no' sae cheery as this the nicht i' the sea tower by St Rules.' What appalling ideas of history they give us when we are children!" And he added half absently-- "'Sitzt das kleine Menschenkind An dem Ocean der Zeit, Schöpft mit seiner kleinen Hand Tropfen aus der Ewigkeit.'" Mona looked up with sparkling eyes and made answer-- "'Schöpfte nicht das kleine Menschenkind Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit, Was geschieht verwehte wie der Wind In den Abgrund öder Ewigkeit.'" "Go on, go on," she said, regardless of his unconcealed surprise, "the best thought comes last." So he took up the strain again:-- "'Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit Schöpft das Mennchenkind mit kleiner Hand. Spiegelt doch, dem Lichte zugewandt, Sich darin die ganze Ewigkeit.'" "I don't know," he said moodily. "There was precious little of Eternity in the drops that were doled out to me." "Not then," said Mona; "but when you were old enough to turn them to the light, you could see the eternal even there." His face relaxed into a smile. This girl was like an outlying part of his own mind. They strolled slowly back to Rachel. "Do you enjoy sight-seeing?" he asked. "The question is too big. Cut it down." "Nay, I will judge for myself,--if you are not too tired to turn back to the town." "Not a bit." When Rachel heard of the proposal, she rose to her feet, with considerable help from Mona and from a stout umbrella. She would fain have "rested her legs" a little longer, and the necessity of acting the part of chaperon never so much as crossed her mind; but the honour of Dr Dudley's escort through the streets of St Rules was not to be lightly foregone. The first half-hour brought considerably more pain than pleasure to Mona. She was straining every nerve to draw out the best side of Rachel; and this, under the circumstances, was no easy task.