Geoffrey hastily disclaimed any such intention, and Elizabeth started alone.  “Ah!” she said to herself, “I thought that you would not come, my dear.”

“Well,” said Geoffrey, when she had well gone, “shall we go out?”

“I think it is pleasanter here,” answered Beatrice.

“Oh, Beatrice, don’t be so unkind,” he said feebly.

“As you like,” she replied.  “There is a fine sunset—­but I think that we shall have a storm.”

They went out, and turned up the lonely beach.  The place was utterly deserted, and they walked a little way apart, almost without speaking.  The sunset was magnificent; great flakes of golden cloud were driven continually from a home of splendour in the west towards the cold lined horizon of the land.  The sea was still quiet, but it moaned like a thing in pain.  The storm was gathering fast.

“What a lovely sunset,” said Geoffrey at length.

“It is a fatal sort of loveliness,” she answered; “it will be a bad night, and a wet morrow.  The wind is rising; shall we turn?”

“No, Beatrice, never mind the wind.  I want to speak to you, if you will allow me to do so.”

“Yes,” said Beatrice, “what about, Mr. Bingham.”

To make good resolutions in a matter of this sort is comparatively easy, but the carrying of them out presents some difficulties.  Geoffrey, conscience-stricken into priggishness, wished to tell her that she would do well to marry Owen Davies, and found the matter hard.  Meanwhile Beatrice preserved silence.

“The fact is,” he said at length, “I most sincerely hope you will forgive me, but I have been thinking a great deal about you and your future welfare.”

“That is very kind of you,” said Beatrice, with an ominous humility.

This was disconcerting, but Geoffrey was determined, and he went on in a somewhat flippant tone born of the most intense nervousness and hatred of his task.  Never had he loved her so well as now in this moment when he was about to counsel her to marry another man.  And yet he persevered in his folly.  For, as so often happens, the shrewd insight and knowledge of the world which distinguished Geoffrey as a lawyer, when dealing with the affairs of others, quite deserted him in this crisis of his own life and that of the woman who worshipped him.

“Since I have been here,” he said, “I have had made to me no less than three appeals on your behalf and by separate people—­by your father, who fancies that you are pining for Owen Davies; by Owen Davies, who is certainly pining for you; and by old Edward, intervening as a kind of domestic amicus curiae.”

“Indeed,” said Beatrice, in a voice of ice.

“All these three urged the same thing—­the desirability of your marrying Owen Davies.”

Beatrice’s face grew quite pale, her lips twitched and her grey eyes flashed angrily.

“Really,” she said, “and have you any advice to give on the subject, Mr. Bingham?”