“Are you grieved about it, Tardif?” I asked.

“No, no,” he answered; “we have always been good friends, you and I, doctor.  No, you shall marry her, and I will be happy.  I will come to visit you sometimes, and she will call me her good Tardif.  That is enough for me.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Olivia.  It was impossible to tell her, or to continue the conversation.  Moreover, the narrow channel between Breckhou and Sark is so strong in its current, that it required both caution and skill to steer the boat amid the needle-like points of the rocks.  At last we gained one of the entrances to the caves, but we could not pull the boat quite up to the strand.  A few paces of shallow water, clear as glass, with pebbles sparkling like gems beneath it, lay between us and the caves.

“Tardif,” I said, “you need not wait for us.  We will return by the cliffs.”

“You know the Gouliot Caves as well as I do?” he replied, though in a doubtful tone.

“All right!” I said, as I swung over the side of the boat into the water, when I found myself knee-deep.  Olivia looked from me to Tardif with a flushed face—­an augury that made my pulses leap.  Why should her face never change when he carried her in his arms?  Why should she shrink from me?

“Are you as strong as Tardif?” she asked, lingering and hesitating before she would trust herself to me.

“Almost, if not altogether,” I answered gayly.  “I’m strong enough to undertake to carry you without wetting the soles of your feet.  Come, it is not more than half a dozen yards.”

She was standing on the bench I had just left, looking down at me with the same vivid flush upon her cheeks and forehead, and with an uneasy expression in her eyes.  Before she could speak again I put my arms round her, and lifted her down.

“You are quite as light as a feather,” I said, laughing, as I carried her to the strip of moist and humid strand under the archway in the rocks.  As I put her down I looked back to Tardif, and saw him regarding us with grave and sorrowful eyes.

“Adieu!” he cried; “I am going to look after my lobster-pots.  God bless you both!”

He spoke the last words heartily; and we stood watching him as long as he was in sight.  Then we went on into the caves.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.

THE GOULIOT CAVES.

Olivia was very silent.

The coast of Sark shows some of the most fantastic workmanship of the sea, but the Gouliot Caves are its wildest and maddest freak.  A strong, swift current sets in from the southwest, and being lashed into a giddy fury by the lightest southwest wind, it has hewn out of the rock a series of cells, and grottos, and alcoves, some of them running far inland, in long, vaulted passages and corridors, with now and then a shaft or funnel in the rocky roof, through which the light streams down into recesses far from