“My daughter is going to London with my sister for a prolonged visit,” said Robert Turold hurriedly.  “She needs womanly training and other advantages which I, in my preoccupations, have been unable to bestow upon her.  It is greatly to her advantage to go.”

Robert Turold gave this explanation with averted face, in a tone which sounded almost apologetic.  The relative positions between them seemed curiously reversed.  It was as though Thalassa were the master, and the other the man.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” Thalassa turned a cautious yet penetrating eye upon his master.  “Well, she’s your own daughter, so I suppose you know what’s the best for her.”  He spoke indifferently, but there was an odd note in his voice.  He picked up his tray, and carelessly added:  “For my part I shall be glad to get out of Cornwall.  It’s a savage place, only fit for savages and seagulls.  There’s the wind rising again.”

A violent gust shook the house, and rattled the window-panes of the room.  It was the eyrie in which the deceased artist had painted his pictures, with two large windows which looked over the cliff.  Again the gale sprang at the house, and smote the windows with spectral blows.  Downstairs, a door slammed sharply.

“Damn the wind!” exclaimed Thalassa peevishly.  “There’s no keeping it out.  I’m going downstairs to lock up now.  You’ll have your supper up here, I suppose?”

“Yes.  I have a lot of work to do before I go to bed.”

Thalassa left the room without further speech, and Robert Turold began rummaging among his papers with a hand which trembled slightly.  The table was littered with parchments, old books, and some sheets of newly written foolscap.  He picked up his pen and plunged it into a brass inkstand, then paused in thought.  His face was perturbed and uneasy.  It may be that he was reviewing the events of the day, wondering, perhaps, whether he had paid too high a price for the attainment of his ambition.  For it he had sacrificed his daughter and the woman who now slept in the churchyard near by, indifferent to it all.  Nothing could restore to him the secret he had divulged that afternoon.

A shade of apprehension deepened on his downcast face.  Then he frowned impatiently, and plunged into his writing again.

CHAPTER VII

On leaving his master’s room Thalassa went swiftly downstairs and disappeared into some remote back region of the lonely old house.  He had other duties to perform before his day’s work was finished.  There was wood to be chopped, coal to be brought in, water to be drawn.  Nearly an hour elapsed before he reappeared, candle in hand, and entered the kitchen.