It was a weird and lonely spot; and a dangerous spot withal.  For only at low spring-tide could it be reached from the land, and then the flood rose far up the cliff, covering all the shingle, and filling the mouth of a dark cavern.  Had her mother gone to that cavern?  It was impossible to see, so utterly was the cliff shrouded in shadow.

Shivering with cold and excitement, Grace crouched down, and gazed into the gloom, till her eyes swam, and a hundred fantastic figures, and sparks of fire, seemed to dance between her and the rock.  Sparks of fire!—­yes; but that last one was no fancy.  An actual flash; the crackle and sputter of a match!  What could it mean?  Another match was lighted; and a moment after, the glare of a lanthorn showed her mother entering beneath the polished arch of rock which glared lurid overhead, like the gateway of the pit of fire.

The light vanished into the windings of the cave.  And then Grace, hardly knowing what she did, rushed up the beach, and crouched down once more at the cave’s mouth.  There she sat, she knew not how long, listening, listening, like a hunted hare; her whole faculties concentrated in the one sense of hearing; her eyes wandering vacantly over the black saws of rock, and glistening oar-weed beds, and bright phosphoric sea.  Thank Heaven, there was not a ripple to break the silence.  Ah, what was that sound within?  She pressed her ear against the rock, to hear more surely.  A rumbling as of stones rolled down.  And then,—­was it a fancy, or were her powers of hearing, intensified by excitement, actually equal to discern the chink of coin?  Who knows? but in another moment she had glided in, silently, swiftly, holding her very breath; and saw her mother kneeling on the ground, the lanthorn by her side, and in her hand the long-lost belt.

She did not speak, she did not move.  She always knew, in her heart of hearts, that so it was:  but when the sin took bodily shape, and was there before her very eyes, it was too dreadful to speak of, to act upon yet.  And amid the most torturing horror and disgust of that great sin, rose up in her the divinest love for the sinner; she felt—­strange paradox—­that she had never loved her mother as she did at that moment.  “Oh, that it had been I who had done it, and not she!” And her mother’s sin was to her her own sin, her mother’s shame her shame, till all sense of her mother’s guilt vanished in the light of her divine love.  “Oh, that I could take her up tenderly, tell her that all is forgiven and forgotten by man and God!—­serve her as I have never served her yet!—­ nurse her to sleep on my bosom, and then go forth and bear her punishment, even if need be on the gallows-tree!” And there she stood, in a silent agony of tender pity, drinking her portion of the cup of Him who bore the sins of all the world.

Silently she stood; and silently she turned to go, to go home and pray for guidance in that dark labyrinth of confused duties.  Her mother heard the rustle; looked up; and sprang to her feet with a scream, dropping gold pieces on the ground.