Mrs. Rosewarne did not at all understand the silence of these young people, and made many attempts to break it up.  Was the mere fact of Mr. Trelyon returning to Eglosilyan next day anything to be sad about?  He was not a school-boy going back to school.  As for Wenna, she had got back her engaged ring, and ought to have been grateful and happy.

“Come now,” she said:  “if you propose to drive back by the Mouse Hole, we must waste no more time here.  Wenna, have you gone to sleep?”

The girl started as if she really had been asleep:  then she walked back to the carriage and got in.  They drove away again without saying a word.

“What is the matter with you, Wenna?  Why are you so downcast?” her mother said.

“Oh, nothing,” the girl said hastily.  “But—­but one does not care to talk much on so beautiful an evening.”

“Yes, that is quite true,” said Mr. Trelyon, quite as eagerly, and with something of a blush:  “one only cares to sit and look at things.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Mrs. Rosewarne with a smile:  she had never before heard Mr. Trelyon give expression to his views upon scenery.

They drove round by the Mouse Hole, and when they came in sight of Penzance again, the bay and the semicircle of houses and St. Michael’s Mount were all a pale gray in the twilight.  As they drove quietly along they heard the voices of people from time to time:  the occupants of the cottages had come out for their evening stroll and chat.  Suddenly, as they were passing certain huge masses of rock that sloped suddenly down to the sea, they heard another sound—­that of two or three boys calling out for help.  The briefest glance showed what was going on.  These boys were standing on the rocks, staring fixedly at one of their companions, who had fallen into the water and was wildly splashing about, while all they could do to help him was to call for aid at the pitch of their voices.

“That chap’s drowning,” Trelyon said, jumping out of the carriage.  The next minute he was out on the rocks, hastily pulling of his coat.  What was it he heard just as he plunged into the sea?—­the agonized voice of a girl calling him back?

Mrs. Rosewarne was at this moment staring at her daughter with almost a horror-stricken look on her face.  Was it really Wenna Rosewarne who had been so mean? and what madness possessed her to make her so?  The girl had hold of her mother’s arm with both her hands, and held it with the grip of a vice, while her white face was turned to the rocks and the sea.  “Oh, mother!” she cried, “it is only a boy, and he is a man; and there is not another in all the world like him!”

“Wenna, is it you who are speaking, or a devil?  The boy is drowning.”