Five days passed. The Lucys had now been a week at Southbourne. They knew it well by that time, for bad weather kept them from going very far beyond it. Jane had found, too, that they had to know some of the visitors. The little Cliff Hotel brought its guests together with a geniality unknown to its superb rival, the Métropole. Under its roof, in bad weather, persons not otherwise incompatible became acquainted with extraordinary rapidity. People had begun already to select each other. Even Mr. Soutar, the clergyman, had emerged from his lonely gloom, and dined by preference at the same table with the middle-aged ladies--the table farthest from the bay window. The Hankins, out of pure kindness, had taken pity on the old lady, Mrs. Jurd. They had made advances to the Lucys, perceiving an agreeable social affinity, and had afterward drawn back. For the Lucys were using the opportunity of the weather for cultivating Mrs. Tailleur. It was not easy, they told themselves, to get to know her. She did not talk much. But as Jane pointed out to Robert, little things came out, things that proved that she was all right. Her father was a country parson, very strait-laced, they gathered; and she had little sisters, years younger than herself. When she talked at all it was in a pretty, innocent way, like a child's, and all her little legends were, you could see, transparently consistent. They had, like a child's, a quite funny reiterance and simplicity. But, like a child, she was easily put off by any sort of interruption. When she thought she had let herself go too far, she would take fright and avoid them for the rest of the day, and they had to begin all over again with her next time. The thing, Lucy said, would be for Jane to get her some day all alone. But Jane said, No; Mrs. Tailleur was ten times more afraid of her than of him. Besides, they had only another week, and they didn't want, did they, to see _too_ much of Mrs. Tailleur? At that Lucy got very red, and promised his sister to take her out somewhere by themselves the next fine day. That was on Wednesday evening, when it was raining hard. The weather lifted with the dawn. The heavy smell of the wet earth was pierced by the fine air of heaven and the sea. Jane Lucy leaned out of her bedroom window and looked eastward beyond the hotel garden to the Cliff. The sea was full of light. Light rolled on the low waves and broke on their tops like foam. It hung quivering on the white face of the Cliff. It was like a thin spray thrown from the heaving light of the sea. At breakfast Jane reminded Robert of his promise to take her for a sail on the first fine day. They turned their backs on the hotel and went seaward. On their way to the boats they passed Mrs. Tailleur sitting on the beach in the sun.