ALL WRONG.

By this time you know that I could not ride along the flat, open shore between St. Peter-Port and the Vale without having a good sight of Sark, though it lay just a little behind me.  It was not in human nature to turn my back doggedly upon it.  I had never seen it look nearer; the channel between us scarcely seemed a mile across.  The old windmill above the Havre Gosselin stood out plainly.  I almost fancied that but for Breckhou I could have seen Tardif’s house, where my darling was living.  My heart leaped at the mere thought of it.  Then I shook Madam’s bridle about her neck, and she carried me on at a sharp canter toward Captain Carey’s residence.

I saw Julia standing at a window up-stairs, gazing down the long white road, which runs as straight as an arrow through the Braye du Valle to L’Ancresse Common.

She must have seen Madam and me half a mile away; but she kept her post motionless as a sentinel, until I jumped down to open the gate.  Then she vanished.

The servant-man was at the door by the time I reached it, and Johanna herself was on the threshold, with her hands outstretched and her face radiant.  I was as welcome as the prodigal son, and she was ready to fall on my neck and kiss me.

“I felt sure of you,” she said, in a low voice.  “I trusted to your good sense and honor, and they have not failed you.  Thank God you are come!  Julia has neither ate nor slept since I brought her here.”

She led me to her own private sitting-room, where I found Julia standing by the fireplace, and leaning against it, as if she could not stand alone.  When I went up to her and took her hand, she flung her arms round my neck, and clung to me, in a passion of tears.  It was some minutes before she could recover her self-command.  I had never seen her abandon herself to such a paroxysm before.

“Julia, my poor girl!” I said, “I did not think you would take it so much to heart as this.”

“I shall come all right directly,” she sobbed, sitting down, and trembling from head to foot.  “Johanna said you would come, but I was not sure.”

“Yes, I am here,” I answered, with a very dreary feeling about me.

“That is enough,” said Julia; “you need not say a word more.  Let us forget it, both of us.  You will only give me your promise never to see her, or speak to her again.”

It might be a fair thing for her to ask, but it was not a fair thing for me to promise.  Olivia had told me she had no friends at all except Tardif and me; and if the gossip of the Sark people drove her from the shelter of his roof, I should be her only resource; and I believed she would come frankly to me for help.

“Olivia quite understands about my engagement to you,” I said.  “I told her at once that we were going to be married, and that I hoped she would find a friend in you."’

“A friend in me, Martin!” she exclaimed, in a tone of indignant surprise; “you could not ask me to be that!”