He did not regard his sojourn at Seacliff with any lively anticipations. It was pleasant to steam up and down the blue river between the sunlit green shores, through the sweet odours from the woods and hedges freshened and spiritualised by the full broad river. The morning swim in the strong sea-water brought the sense of health and vigour and power into his frame. The breakfast, ample, well cooked, appetising, with blithe company, full of inspiriting talk and resolute happiness, in the steamer's cabin, would cure a misanthrope and buoy the heart of a cynic. The joyous solemnity of that cigar on deck afterwards would reconcile an anchorite to comfort. Yet for all these advantages Henry Walter Grey did not like his season at Seacliff. The evening voyage was no less to be enjoyed. After the dust and worry of the city's day it was good to feel the moist winds blowing through your hair, against your forehead; to hear the cooling swirl of the water at the bow, and the far-off wash of the steamer's swells upon the shadowy shore; to watch the crimson sunset, and the coming of the pale-blue stars, and the red moon that, slowly rising from the hot earth to the limpid sky, grew mild and fair, while under it the white earth sailed silent down the ocean of the dark; to feel the hallowed peace of night ascending from earth to God. But it ruined all to know in that cottage above the bay on the ledge of red cliff one waited who was no companion, yet bound to him for life; to know year by year the chasm between them widened; and that above that chasm hung a spirit of evil, the bad angel of a terrible weakness, which might at any moment become visible to all those standing by, and ruin her, and bring on him pity--pity, that boneless scorn more unendurable than contempt or loathing. In the deep seclusion of the Manor, Grey felt the skeleton in his house was pretty safely hidden; here in Seacliff there were innumerable chances of discovery. It is more than likely he would not have gone to Seacliff in the summer if by any possibility he could safely avoid it. But all the well-off people of Daneford went every year to the little town, and to depart from the custom would be to attract a dangerous attention to himself and his household. It had been his custom of former years to stay at Seacliff for three months of summer; but in the year 1866 he resolved to limit his stay to one month--the month of September. When he and she were at home in the Manor House, she was more directly under his control, immediately under his observation. But on leaving Seacliff in the morning he was always weighed down by the dread that in this little town of much gossip something might leak out while he was away. She might go into the town, and in some incautious way betray her fault, and destroy all the respect people felt for her--all the respect they felt for his wife.