She came and went during the day, as she had heretofore done; but she was more silent, more reserved than usual, and often her eyes rested upon me, though she shifted her gaze when I looked at her. I rose in the afternoon, but in a few hours was glad to get to bed again. Next day I felt decidedly better and stronger. It was a bright, still day, cloudless, and the sun lay warm upon the land, and the sea stretched like a polished plate of steel, full of gleams of different shades of blue. I went down to the pier in an old-fashioned, rickety chair, and my aunt walked by my side. The harbour was gay with the red canvas of smacks. A number of ships, of many rigs, lay close in against the wall, and their white canvas hung motionless in festoons, drying after the rain or dew of the night. The sweet, salt, still atmosphere was refreshing to one’s innermost life. All sounds came in a sort of music from the town, and I heard a gay ringing of church bells as for a marriage; the tones, silvered to the ear by distance, mingled pleasantly with the noise of the foaming of the strong tide racing off the rounded base of the pier. I said to aunt: ‘When Tom and I are married, we shall often come to Ramsgate, and perhaps live here. I do not wonder that you like the place.’ In silence she stepped to the side of the pier, and seemed to look earnestly at the figure of a smack that had dropped her anchor about a mile off, her brown sails hoisted, and the image under her as perfect as a mirror could reflect it. When she returned to my side, she spoke of the beauty of the day and the difference between the air of Stepney and that of Ramsgate, and we then leisurely returned to our lodgings. I was sure that some trouble weighed upon her mind; but as my questions seemed to make her peevish, as her worry might relate to something which she would wish to conceal from me, I forbore further inquiry. That day passed, and next day I was well enough to rise after breakfast and go into the drawing-room, where I sat upon a sofa wheeled close to the window. I was reading a novel, which my aunt had borrowed from the Marine Library, and had wholly forgotten myself in the interest of the story. My aunt had been absent for at least an hour. I believed she was out shopping. She entered without her bonnet, and coming to the sofa, sat down, took me by the hand and looked me in the face. The tears gushed into her eyes suddenly, and for a few moments she moved her lips in a vain effort to speak. She then said: ‘I dare not conceal it longer from you, Marian. But, oh, what news it is! How am I to break it to you?’ I threw the book down. The neck of my dress seemed to strangle me. Mechanically I removed my brooch and eased the tension of my neck with my finger whilst I looked at her. ‘It concerns Tom,’ she said. ‘Is he dead?’ said I, speaking with a heightened note in my voice that carried it out of recognition of my own hearing. ‘No.’ ‘Is it very bad news?’