George North had stepped into the room, and they were standing side by side at the open window in the moonlight, each perfectly conscious of what the companionship was to the other. He began telling her where he had been and what doing; and opened the sketch-book to show her the drawing. "Sitting in the chapel ruins all that while alone by moonlight!" exclaimed Ethel. "It is plain you are not a native of Greylands, Mr. North. I question whether any other man in the place would do it." "I am not a poor simple fisherman, Ethel," he laughed. He had called her "Ethel" some time now, led to it by the example of others at Greylands' Rest. "I was not thinking altogether of the fishermen. I don't fancy even Harry Castlemaine would do it." "No?" said Mr. North, an amused smile lingering on his "At least, I have heard him, more than once, express a dislike of the place; that is, of going to it--had he to do such a thing--after dark. Did you see anything?" "Only----" Mr. North suddenly arrested his words. He had been about to say, Only Jane Hallet. Various reasons prompted him to close his lips on the point to Miss Reene. "Only shadows," he continued, amending the phrase. "The moon went under a cloud now and then. It is a most beautiful night out at sea." Her slender fingers were trembling as she held one side of the sketch-book, he holding the other; trembling with sweet emotion. Not a word of his love had Mr. North said to her; not a word could he say to her under present circumstances; but Ethel felt that it was hers, hers for all time. Fate might part them in this life; each, it was possible, might marry apart; but he would never love another as he loved her. "How exact it is!" she cried, looking at the page, which the bright clear moonlight fell upon. "I should know it anywhere. You have even got that one little dark stone in the middle of the wall that seems to have been put in after the other stones and is so unlike them." "I made it darker that I may know which it is for the painting," he answered. "It will make a nice picture." "Oh, very. When shall you paint it?" "That I don't know. Some of these odd days." "You are not painting at all now." "No. I don't feel settled enough at the Dolphin for that." A pause of silence. In changing the position of his hand, still holding the book, Mr. North somehow let it touch hers. Ethel's voice trembled slightly when next she spoke. "Shall you be going over to France again?" "Undoubtedly. In a letter I received this morning from some of my friends there, they inquire when it is to be. I am lingering here long, they think. It was to tell Madame Guise I had heard, for she knows them, that brought me here so late." "You--you said one day, I remember, that you might probably settle in France," resumed Ethel, inwardly shivering as she spoke it. "Shall you do so?"