'Well, Ethel,' at last he said. 'I never guessed it!' she said, with a gasp. 'No wonder Harry cannot bear to be away from it. Must we leave it?' as he moved back. 'Only to smooth ground,' said Dr. Spencer; 'it is too dark to stay here among the stones and crab-pots.' The summer twilight was closing in; lights shining in the village under the cliffs, and looking mysterious on distant points of the coast; stars were shining forth in the pale blue sky, and the young moon shedding a silver rippled beam on the water. 'If papa were but here!' said Ethel, wakening from another gaze, and recollecting that she was not making herself agreeable. 'So you like the expedition?' 'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney said to Coleridge at Lodore.' 'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!' 'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!' 'To find anything superior to Minster Street.' 'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that there is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.' She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.' 'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I forgot there was such a cause.' 'Cause--you know nothing about it.' She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood. 'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made me a wanderer?' 'Only what papa told me.' 'He--he was the last person to know.' 'He told me,' said Ethel, hurrying it out in a fright, 'that you went away--out of generosity--not to interfere with his happiness.' Then she felt as if she had done a shocking thing, and waited anxiously, while Dr. Spencer deliberately made a deep hole in the shingle with his stick. 'Well,' at last he said, 'I thought that matter was unknown to all men--above all to Dick!' 'It was only after you were gone, that he put things together and made it out.' 'Did--she--know?' said Dr. Spencer, with a long breath. 'I cannot tell,' said Ethel. 'And how or why did he tell you?' (rather hurt.) 'It was when first you came. I am sure no one else knows it. But he told me because he could not help it; he was so sorry for you.' They walked the whole length of the parade, and had turned before Dr. Spencer spoke again; and then he said, 'It is strange! My one vision was of walking on the sea-shore with her; and that just doing so with you should have brought up the whole as fresh as five-and-thirty years ago!' 'I wish I was more like her,' said Ethel.