In the back of that conveyance, on this particular sunny day, a single occupant was exposed to the keen breeze, protected by a motor veil of dark blue chiffon that obscured the outline of her face. The wide inviting stretch of sea with its curling waves, ivory tipped, was lost to her, and the silvery gleam of gulls dipping to the water. In the blue arch of the sky above, clouds of dazzling white were driven by the east wind, massed together to salute the great golden sun. It was not only the heavy veil that shut the vision from her sight. For Mrs. Uniacke was not, in any sense, an observant woman. Beauty as beauty left her untouched or filled her with a faint distress. There was so much "to be done in life"--this was her strenuous daily creed--that to pause by the way and enjoy God's gifts became a sinful waste of the fleeting moments, destined to work. Her restlessness of body and mind forbade that pleasant state in which the spirit frees itself from more material cares to absorb Nature's picture, utterly soothed by a sense of colour or light or of exquisite proportion. Yet, for all her unconsciousness of the birth of a new season on Earth, a similar awakening stirred in the depths of her woman's heart. For the object of her journey was a meeting with Stephen Somerfield; her thoughts were full of that young man to the exclusion of all else. The delicate flush on her bird-like face and the soft excitement in her eyes betrayed the emotions that warred within, self-accusing, yet triumphant. At the end of a long spell of silence Stephen had written a clever letter explaining away his neglect of Jill and throwing himself on the mother's mercy. He had placed the blame on the girl's shoulders with a brief account of her attitude vis-a-vis to himself, her rebellious disregard of his wishes, her flat refusal to take his advice. "I can quite understand how you feel"--he wrote with apparent candour--"I can find no excuse for my conduct. But you must see how difficult it was for me to force myself on such a plainly unwilling companion--one, moreover, who had not scrupled to openly show her dislike to me. "I was there in a semi-official position. I had my own work to do--not militant, it is true, but important in its lesser way. On my arrival the night before I found a mass of correspondence--the trouble incident to the fire, police reports, etc., etc.--and had I not known your keen desire that Jill should be left in my charge, I should not have gone to the meeting at all, but acted as I eventually did. "I see now that I was wrong to stay away, but--to speak plainly--Jill had been _so_ rude to me that my pride at last rose in arms. "I knew she was with some excellent women, two of whom were your personal friends, and, of course, I hadn't the faintest idea there was likely to be serious trouble.