Lady Deringham was slowly recovering herself. She was white still, even to the lips, and there was a strange, sick pain at her heart. Yet she answered him with something of her usual deliberateness, conscious perhaps that her servants, although their heads were studiously averted, had yet witnessed with surprise this unexpected meeting. "You certainly startled me," she said; "I had imagined that this was the most desolate part of all unfrequented spots! It is here I come when I want to feel absolutely alone. I did not dream of meeting another fellow creature--least of all people in the world, perhaps, you!" "I," he answered, smiling gently, "was perhaps the better prepared. A few minutes ago, from the cliffs yonder, I saw your carriage drawn up here, and I saw you alight. I wanted to speak with you, so I lost no time in scrambling down on to the sands. You have changed marvellously little, Lady Deringham!" "And you," she said, "only in name. You are the Mr. Sabin with whom my son was playing golf yesterday morning?" "I am Mr. Sabin," he answered. "Your son did me a good service a week or two back. He is a very fine young fellow; I congratulate you." "And your niece," Lady Deringham asked; "who is she? My son spoke to me of her last night." Mr. Sabin smiled faintly. "Ah! Madame," he said, "there have been so many people lately who have been asking me that question, yet to you as to them I must return the same answer. She is my niece!" "You call her?" "She shares my name at present." "Is she your daughter?" He shook his head sadly. "I have never been married," he said, with an indefinable mournfulness in his flexible tones. "I have had neither wife, nor child, nor friend. It is well for me that I have not!" She looked down at his deformity, and woman-like she shivered. "It is no better, then?" she murmured, with eyes turned seaward. "It is absolutely incurable," he declared. She changed the subject abruptly. "The last I heard of you," she said, "was that you were in China. You were planning great things there. In ten years, I was told, Europe was to be at your mercy!" "I left Pekin five years ago," he said. "China is a land of Cabals. She may yet be the greatest country in the world. I, for one, believe in her destiny, but it will be in the generations to come. I have no patience to labour for another to reap the harvest. Then, too, a craving for just one draught of civilisation brought me westward again. Mongolian habits are interesting but a little trying." "And what," she asked, looking at him steadily, "has brought you to Deringham, of all places upon this earth?" He smiled, and with his stick traced a quaint pattern in the sand.