It was almost dinner time.  Elizabeth had been out sailing with Madam Archdale, Colonel Pepperell, and Sir Temple, and Lady Dacre.  They were in the Colonel’s boat; and Madam Pepperell, who had been detained, had sent her young guest to represent her.  But Edmonson had gone off with his host to Colonel Archdale’s, and Bulchester had mysteriously disappeared soon afterward.  Elizabeth suspected that he had gone to pay a visit to Katie and had found her so fascinating that he could not tear himself from her society, or that he had wandered off somewhere by himself to dwell upon her perfections.  “Poor simpleton!” she said to herself in the revulsion from her fears of the night before.  At all events, the result was the same; there were only three at Seascape to accept the Colonel’s invitation to go sailing.

It was always a refreshment to Elizabeth to be with Sir Temple and Lady Dacre; that morning it was even better than being alone; they were the only ones purely spectators in the drama of struggle and suffering going on under the courtesies that were its scenic accompaniments.  When they talked and jested it was out of happy hearts, at least so far as the things about them were concerned, and for this reason the strain was taken from her in their presence.  She had only to be gay enough, and there was no need of watching her words lest they should be misconstrued.  If she had been asked why anything that she said or did was liable to be misconstrued, she could not have told.  This was her feeling, but she did not see her way; no flash of the electric storm that the blackness foreboded had yet shown her where she stood; but the elemental conditions affected her.

The boat on its return had landed Madam Archdale and her guests on the pebbly beach at Seascape, not far from the house.  They had said farewell and sauntered up the path toward it and disappeared.  The boat was about putting out again when a man came running up to the Colonel, and begged him to wait to speak with the Captain of a schooner standing out about half a mile.  The Captain had come ashore on purpose to see him and was a little way down the beach now hurrying toward him.  The business was urgent.

“Go back without me,” the Colonel said.  “I may be kept here for some time.”  But Elizabeth had had enough of sailing for that day; she was already on shore and said that she would rather walk home.  As Pepperell left her with an apology she walked on a few rods, and stopped to speak to a fisherman cleaning his boat.  She had seen him at the house and had heard that he had lost his child the week before.  As she turned from him she went on slowly until she came to where a boulder towered over her head and seemed to bar her progress except along the shore.  She knew the zigzag way that wound about its base and led her into the straight path again which would take her across the grounds of Seascape and bring her into the road not far from Colonel Pepperell’s home.  But before she