She could not forget the unmistakable admiration in his eyes, and yet—and yet— “Like midges coming from nowhere and vanishing nowhere, or wits hurrying and scurrying over an ant-hill,” she repeated vaguely. “Ah! he could not have meant that—surely—surely he could not... For if so, what could one ant be to him more than another?” For a moment her heart was heavy, then she remembered his fondness for his mother and took comfort again. “It is only that someone or something has disappointed him,” she told herself, “and it has made him bitter and cynical, but it is only a passing mood. By and by he will change again, and perhaps I can help him. “Yes,” her eyes glowed softly, “perhaps I can help him to find faith again, and to be happy instead of hard and indifferent.” The stars came out and a crescent moon hung over the mountains. The night was gloriously beautiful—gloriously still—and a deep restfulness stole over her spirit. In the deep, silent depths of her Celtic imagination, in which dwelt ever paramount, before all, that divine love of beauty which imbues a too often prosaic world with a vague wonder of loveliness, and fair promise, she saw only the heights to which men might rise, and the power of goodness, and held to her ideals in the face of all destroying. She was aroused at last by a step approaching over the shingle that was so like the step of the afternoon that she started and held her breath in wondering expectation. But it was only Jack, seeking for her with anxious qualms about the damp night air, and a certain glow in his eyes when he found her, which might have told her many things, had she had leisure to observe it. “You had better come in, Eileen,” he said simply. “It is too damp to sit by the water. I have been looking for you everywhere; I was so afraid you would take cold.” She got up at once, and with a murmured word of thanks, followed him silently to the house, still lost in a far-off dream of happiness. CHAPTER VIII Paddy’s Pigs. A spell of beautiful autumn weather brought Lawrence often to the beach as of old to get his boat, but Kathleen and Doreen no longer accompanied him. They were not asked, and had they been would have declined the honour. A nameless feud was waging between the _dilettante_ brother and the two lively Irish girls, scarcely less wild than Paddy, who resented his cool superiority and cutting sarcasms to their inmost core. It did not interfere with anyone’s pleasure, however, as they had hosts of friends all over the countryside, and Lawrence preferred having Eileen to himself. It was hardly realised by the elders that with so many young folks about two should have much opportunity of being alone, or a little more discretion might have been shown. They were all supposed to be out together, and probably were at the start-off, but a moment’s thought might have suggested Paddy and Jack most unlikely occupants of Lawrence’s trim yacht.