future.  Of just what that gift might consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling pebbles.  And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat.  She could have cried off, begged for postponement.  For she was very tired, after all.  She didn’t want anything now, anything which—­however delightful in itself—­demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very pleased.  She shied away, in short.  And then commendably rallied her forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.

“Yes—­come.  I am here,” she called in response to that lately heard calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to accept the impending gift.

“I am here,” she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words choking in her throat.

For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected, but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of the wet.  And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so staggering and intimate—­as summing up all the last ten days confused experience—­that Damaris could not control herself.  She turned away with a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with them, bowed her head.

The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time elapsed before he spoke.  When he presently did so, his voice reached her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and in accent.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he began, “but I hailed you just now, and you told me to come.—­I concluded you meant what you said.  Not, I’m afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have made much difference in the upshot.  Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing, that he set you across the river soon after two o’clock, and that there’d been no call for the ferry since.  So I took one of my own boats and just came over to look for you—­in case you might have met with some mishap or strayed among the sand-hills and couldn’t find your”—­

Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint.  But here, as though struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out: 

“Nothing has happened has it?  No cowardly brute has interfered with you or upset you?  Dear God alive, don’t tell me I’m too late, don’t tell me that.”

Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat acted as a cordial.  She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.

“No,” she said, “of course not.  Who would venture to be rude to me?  I have not seen anyone all the afternoon—­until now, when you came.  And,” she added by way of further explanation—­she didn’t want to be ungracious or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this understood—­“in the distance I didn’t recognize you.  I mistook you for someone else”—­