“He is old, and I am very, very glad he did not see you.  Aren’t you tired?  Would you not like to sit down a moment before we go back?”

They sat down on one of the rocks near the edge of the water.

“You are a very good swimmer, Mr. Trevanion.”

“No, not very; and yesterday I was particularly bad, for a kind of faintness came over me just before I reached you, and I thought I was done for.”

“Dear me! how dreadful!  How did you conquer it?”

“Merely by saying to myself I would not give in, and I struggled with it for a minute and then it disappeared.”

“How strong you must be!  I am sure I could not do that.”

“Ah! there was something else, Miss Shipton.  You see, I had you ahead of me, and I thought I could be of some service to you.”

Miss Shipton made no direct reply, but threw some pebbles in the water.  Robert felt himself gradually overcome, or nearly overcome, by what to him was quite new.  He could not keep his voice steady, and although what he said was poor and of no importance, it was charged with expressionless heat.  For example, Miss Shipton’s parasol dropped and she stooped to pick it up.  “Let me pick it up,” he said, and his lips quivered, and the let me pick it up—­a poor, little, thin wire of words—­was traversed by an electric current raising them to white-hot glow, and as powerful as that which flows through many mightier and more imposing conductors.  What are words?  “Good-bye,” for example, is said every morning by thousands of creatures in the London suburbs as they run to catch their train, and the present writer has heard it said by a mother to her beloved boy as she stepped on board the tug which was about to leave the big steamer, and she knew she would never see him again.  Robert handed her the parasol, and unconsciously, by that curious sympathy by which we are all affected, without any obvious channel of communication, she felt the condition in which his nerves were.  She was a little uncomfortable, and, rising, said she thought it was time she was at home.  They rose and walked back slowly till their paths parted.

The next day Robert renewed his walk, but there was no Miss Shipton.  The summer heat had passed into thunderstorms, and these were succeeded by miserable grey days with mist, confusing sea, land, and sky, and obliterating every trace of colour.  As he went backwards and forwards to the house over the hill, he watched every corner and turned round a hundred times, although his reason would have told him that to expect Miss Shipton in the rain was ridiculously absurd.