Blake was in Scotland.  His letters were not very frequent, and though his leave was nearly up, he did not speak of returning.

Muriel was thus thrown upon Jim Ratcliffe’s care—­a state of affairs which seemed to please him mightily.  It was in fact his presence that made life easy for her just then.  She saw considerably more of him than of Nick, the latter having completely relegated the duties of host to his brother.  Though they met every day, they were seldom alone together, and she began to have a feeling that Nick’s attitude towards her had undergone a change.  His manner was now always friendly, but never intimate.  He did not seek her society, but neither did he avoid her.  And never by word or gesture did he refer to anything that had been between them in the past.  She even wondered sometimes if there might not possibly have been another interpretation to Olga’s story.  That unwonted depression of his that the child had witnessed had surely never been inspired by her.

She found the time pass quickly enough during those six weeks.  The care of Olga occupied her very fully.  She was always busy devising some new scheme for her amusement.

Mrs. Ratcliffe returned to Weir, and Dr. Jim determined to transfer Olga to her home as soon as she was out of quarantine.  With paternal kindliness, he insisted that Muriel must accompany her.  Daisy’s return was still uncertain, though it could not be long delayed; and Muriel had no urgent desire to return to the lonely life on the shore.

So, to Olga’s outspoken delight, she yielded to the doctor’s persuasion, and on the afternoon preceding the child’s emancipation from her long imprisonment she walked down to the cottage to pack her things.

It was a golden day in the middle of September and she lingered awhile on the shore when her work was done.  There was not a wave in all the vast, shimmering sea.  The tide was going out, and the shallow ripples were clear as glass as they ran out along the white beach.  Muriel paused often in her walk.  She was sorry to leave the little fishing-village, realising that she had been very happy there.  Life had passed as smoothly as a dream of late, so smoothly that she had been content to live in the present with scarcely a thought for the future.

This afternoon she had begun to realise that her peaceful time was drawing to an end.  In a few weeks more, she would be in town in all the bustle of preparation.  And further still ahead of her—­possibly two months—­there loomed the prospect of her return to India, of Lady Bassett’s soft patronage, of her marriage.

She shivered a little as one after another these coming events presented themselves.  There was not one of them that she would not have postponed with relief.  She stood still with her face to the sunlit sea, and told herself that her summer in England had been all too short.  She had an almost passionate longing for just one more year of home.