His tone was kind; his manner was gentle; his tender interest in her seemed to have revived.  Her long absence had alarmed him; he feared she might be ill.  “I was only thinking,” she said.  He smiled, and sat down by her, and asked if she had been thinking of the place that they should go to when they left London.

Chapter XXXIII.

Mrs. Romsey.

The one hotel in Sandyseal was full, from the topmost story to the ground floor; and by far the larger half of the landlord’s guests were invalids sent to him by the doctors.

To persons of excitable temperament, in search of amusement, the place offered no attractions.  Situated at the innermost end of a dull little bay, Sandyseal—­so far as any view of the shipping in the Channel was concerned—­might have been built on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.  Vessels of any importance kept well out of the way of treacherous shoals and currents lurking at the entrance of the bay.  The anchorage ground was good; but the depth of water was suited to small vessels only—­to shabby old fishing-smacks which seldom paid their expenses, and to dirty little coasters carrying coals and potatoes.  At the back of the hotel, two slovenly rows of cottages took their crooked course inland.  Sailing masters of yachts, off duty, sat and yawned at the windows; lazy fishermen looked wearily at the weather over their garden gates; and superfluous coastguards gathered together in a wooden observatory, and leveled useless telescopes at an empty sea.  The flat open country, with its few dwarf trees and its mangy hedges, lay prostrate under the sky in all the desolation of solitary space, and left the famous restorative air free to build up dilapidated nerves, without an object to hinder its passage at any point of the compass.  The lonely drab-colored road that led to the nearest town offered to visitors, taking airings, a view of a low brown object in the distance, said to be the convent in which the Nuns lived, secluded from mortal eyes.  At one side of the hotel, the windows looked on a little wooden pier, sadly in want of repair.  On the other side, a walled inclosure accommodated yachts of light tonnage, stripped of their rigging, and sitting solitary on a bank of mud until their owners wanted them.  In this neighborhood there was a small outlying colony of shops:  one that sold fruit and fish; one that dealt in groceries and tobacco; one shut up, with a bill in the window inviting a tenant; and one, behind the Methodist Chapel, answering the double purpose of a post-office and a storehouse for ropes and coals.  Beyond these objects there was nothing (and this was the great charm of the place) to distract the attention of invalids, following the doctor’s directions, and from morning to night taking care of their health.

The time was evening; the scene was one of the private sitting-rooms in the hotel; and the purpose in view was a little tea-party.