“Patch,” she asked suddenly, “which is the shortest way home, without going through Stourmouth and Marychurch? “—­And, under his instructions, turned the dog-cart down a grassy side-track, heading south-east—­her back now to the wind and inland country, her face to the larger horizon, the larger if more hazardous freedom of the sea.

Conversation, started thus by her enquiry, flourished in friendly, desultory fashion until, about three-quarters of an hour later, the front gates of The Hard came in sight.  By then afternoon merged itself in early evening.  Lights twinkled in the windows of the black cottages, upon the Island, and in those of Faircloth’s inn.  The sky flamed orange and crimson behind the sand-hills and Stone Horse Head.  The air carried the tang of coming frost.  Upon the hard gravel of the drive, the wheels of the dog-cart grated and the horse’s hoofs rang loud.

Another Damaris came home to the Damaris who had set forth—­a Damaris rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent.  Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the house.  For, so entering, her loss again confronted her as an actual entity.  It sat throned in the lamp-lit hall.  It demanded payment of tribute before permitting her to pass.  Its attitude amounted, in her too fertile imagination, to a menace.  Here, within the walls which had witnessed not only her own major acquaintance with sorrow, but so many events and episodes of strange and, sometimes, cruel import—­super-normal manifestations, too, of which last she feared to think—­she grew undone and weak, disposed to let tears flow, and yield once more to depression and apathy.  The house was stronger than she.  But—­but—­only stronger, surely, if she consented to turn craven and give way to it?—­Whereupon she consciously, of set purpose, defied the house, denied its right to browbeat thus and enslave her.  For had not she this afternoon, up on the moorland, found a finer manner of mourning than it imposed, a manner at once more noble and so more consonant with the temper and achievements of her beloved dead?  She believed that she had.

On the hall table lay a little flight of visiting cards.  Her mind occupied in silent battle with the house, Damaris glanced at them absently and would have passed on.  But something in the half-deciphered printed names caught her attention.  She bent lower, doubting if she could have read aright.

“Brig.-General and Mrs. Frayling.”—­Two smaller cards, also bearing the General’s name, ranged with two others bearing that of “The Rev. Marshall Wace.”  A written inscription, in the corner of each, notified a leading hotel in Stourmouth as the habitat of their respective owners.