Houston was unable to speak for a minute, so frightened had he been by this apparition from the sea, so frightened was he to be wandering round this stolen house and in his wanderings to have provoked this spirit of the place, and in the end more frightened than ever, perhaps, to find who the spirit really was. Dorothy did not realize how strange she looked, how magical and debonair, how perilous, how wild; she whose brain was throbbing with one thought perceived in Houston's expression only the shame he should naturally feel for having robbed her son. "You look tremendously blown about," he managed to say, finally. "Won't you come inside for a minute?" Then suddenly as if the wind had got into his brain he said to her, "Dorothy, why don't you marry me and take all this back for yourself?" "Could I?" She had appealed to herself, not to him; but he, misunderstanding her question, began like a true Oriental to praise the gifts he would offer her. "Stop," she commanded. "All these things that you want to give to me, will you give them to my son? Don't be so bewildered. You knew I had a son? I can't stop here to argue about myself and what I can give you or you can give me. If you will make over Clare as it stands with all its land--oh yes, and buy back the Hopley estate which Tony's father sold--to my son, I'll marry you." "If you'll marry me I'll do anything," he vowed. There was a momentary lull in the wind, and as if in the silence that followed he was able to grasp how much he had undertaken, he stammered, nervously: "And you and I? Suppose you and I have children?" "Well," said Dorothy, "they'll be half brothers and sisters of the sixth Earl of Clarehaven, which will be quite enough for _them_, won't it?" And that night, while the wind still cooed round Cherrington Cottage, Dorothy, Countess of Clarehaven, wrote out for Debrett and read to Augusta, Countess of Clarehaven: "Clarehaven, Earl of (Clare.) (Earl. U.K. 1816. Bt. 1660.) Lucius Clare; 6th Earl and 11th Baronet; _b._ April 25, 1915; _s._ 1915; is patron of one living. "_Arms_--Purpure, two flanches ermine, on a chief sable a moon in her complement argent. _Crest_--A moon in her complement argent, arising from a cloud proper. _Supporters_--Two angels, vested purpure, winged and crined, or, each holding in the exterior hand a key or. "_Seat_--Clare Court, Devonshire." THE END