fogs and rain, were the dream; and yet upon seascape and landscape rested such a miraculous charm that they seemed visionary rather than actual.  As he walked along, he naturally thought of yesterday, and the light, the heat, and the colour naturally also renewed in him the picture which he had been continually repainting for himself since yesterday morning.  He went to the house, saw the stonework was going on all right, and as he returned, whom should he meet but Miss Shipton, who, undeterred by the fright of the day before, had just had another bathe, and was taking a turn along the cliff to dry her hair, which was hanging over her shoulders.  She was not by any means what is called “fast,” but she knew how to dress herself.  She had a straw hat with a very large brim, a plain brown holland dress, a brown holland parasol, and pretty white shoes; for nothing would ever induce Miss Shipton to put her feet into the yellow abominations which most persons wore at Perran in the summer.

Robert took off his cap.

“Oh, Mr. Trevanion, I am so glad to see you.  You must have thought me such a queer creature.  I have not half thanked you.  But what could I do?  I couldn’t write, and I couldn’t call, and I thought you would not like a noise being made about it.  Yet you saved me from being drowned.”

“It was nothing, Miss Shipton,” said Robert, smiling.  “You were in the ebb there, and I pulled you out of it—­just twenty yards, that was all.  I hope you haven’t told anybody.”

“No; as I have said, I thought you wouldn’t like it; but nevertheless, although it is all very well for you to talk in that way, I owe you my life.”

“Are you going any farther?”

“Just a few steps till my hair is dry.”

He turned and walked by her side.

“You see that the buoys are beyond where the channel really begins.  I once tried to swim round two of them, but it was as much as ever I could do to get back.  If I were you, I would give them a wide berth again; but if you should be caught, go on and do what we did yesterday—­try to turn off into the back-stream just inside the point.”

“You may be sure I shall never go near them any more.”

“Unless you happen to see me,” said Robert, his face flushed with his happy thought, “and then you will give me the pleasure of coming after you.”

She looked at him, shifted her parasol, and laughed a little.

“Pleasure! really, Mr. Trevanion, were you not very much frightened?”

“Not for myself, except just for an instant.”

“Oh, I was awfully frightened!  I thought I must give up.  I never, never shall forget that moment when you laid hold of me.”

“But you have been in the water again this morning.”

“Oh, yes!  I do enjoy it so, and of course I did not go far.  That stupid bathing-man, by the way, ought to have looked out yesterday.  He might have come in the boat and have saved you a wetting.  I believe he was asleep.”