She gazed at the sea with passion. This love for the sea had been a dominant power in her ever since she could remember, and had come she knew not whence. It had been, in earlier days, one of the deep, unspoken bonds between herself and Katherine, and it had been one of her most active criticisms of Millie that ‘the girl cared nothing about the sea whatever’. But she, Aunt Aggie, could not say why she loved it. She was no poet, and she knew not the meaning of the word ‘Enthusiasm’. She was ashamed a little of her passion, and, when she had walked five miles to Smuggler’s Button or seven miles to Lingard Sand ‘just to look at it’, she would walk stiffly home again, would give no answer to those who asked questions, and, if driven into a corner would say she had been ‘just for a walk.’ But she loved it in all its moods, grave, gay and terrible, loved it even when it was like a grey cotton garment designed for the poor or when it slipped into empty space under a blind and soaking mist. She loved the rhythm of it, the indifference of it, above all, the strength of it. Here at last, thank God, was something that she could admire more than herself. She had, nevertheless, always at the back of her mind the thought that it would be bad for it if it knew how much she thought of it; she was always ready to be disappointed in it, although she knew that it would never disappoint her—she was grim and unbending in her attitude to it lest, in a moment of ecstasy, she should make cheap of her one devotion. To-day she did not actively consider it. She sat on the rock and made up her mind that she would take steps ‘that very day.’ Harriet, her sister-in-law, had, during these last months, often surprised her, but there would be no question of her action in this climax of the whole unfortunate business. “The young man,” as she always called Philip, would never show his face in Trenchard circles again. Harriet might forgive, because of her love for Katherine, his impertinence, his conceit, his irreligion, his leading Henry into profligacy and drunkenness, she _would_ not—_could_ not—forgive his flagrant and open immorality, an immorality that had extended over many years. As she thought of this vicious life she gave a little shiver—a shiver of indignation, of resolution, of superiority, and of loneliness. The world—the gay, vital, alluring world, had left her high and dry upon that rock on which she was sitting, and, rebuke and disapprove of it as she might, it cared little for her words.