“She is going to meet her lover,” thought Elizabeth.  “I wish I could be there to see that too, but I have seen enough.”

She yawned and appeared to wake.  “What, Beatrice, going out already in this pouring rain?” she said, with feigned astonishment.

“Yes, I have slept badly and I want to get some air,” answered Beatrice, starting and colouring; “I suppose that it was the storm.”

“Has there been a storm?” said Elizabeth, yawning again.  “I heard nothing of it—­but then so many things happen when one is asleep of which one knows nothing at the time,” she added sleepily, like one speaking at random.  “Mind that you are back to say good-bye to Mr. Bingham; he goes by the early train, you know—­but perhaps you will see him out walking,” and appearing to wake up thoroughly, she raised herself in bed and gave her sister one piercing look.

Beatrice made no answer; that look sent a thrill of fear through her.  Oh; what had happened!  Or was it all a dream?  Had she dreamed that she stood face to face with Geoffrey in his room before a great darkness struck her and overwhelmed her?  Or was it an awful truth, and if a truth, how came she here again?  She went to the pantry, found a morsel of bread and ate it, for faintness still pursued her.  Then feeling better, she left the house and set her face towards the beach.

It was a dreary morning.  The great wind had passed; now it only blew in little gusts heavy with driving rain.  The sea was sullen and grey and grand.  It beat in thunder on the shore and flew over the sunken rocks in columns of leaden spray.  The whole earth seemed one desolation, and all its grief was centred in this woman’s broken heart.

Geoffrey, too, was up.  How he had passed the remainder of that tragic night we need not inquire—­not too happily we may be sure.  He heard the front door close behind Beatrice, and followed out into the rain.

On the beach, some half of a mile away, he found her gazing at the sea, a great white gull wheeling about her head.  No word of greeting passed between them; they only grasped each other’s hands and looked into each other’s hollow eyes.

“Come under the shelter of the cliff,” he said, and she came.  She stood beneath the cliff, her head bowed low, her face hidden by the hood, and spoke.

“Tell me what has happened,” she said; “I have dreamed something, a worse dream than any that have gone before—­tell me if it is true.  Do not spare me.”

And Geoffrey told her all.

When he had finished she spoke again.

“By what shall I swear,” she said, “that I am not the thing which you must think me?  Geoffrey, I swear by my love for you that I am innocent.  If I came—­oh, the shame of it! if I came—­to your room last night, it was my feet which led me, not my mind that led my feet.  I went to sleep, I was worn out, and then I knew no more till I heard a dreadful sound, and saw you before me in a blaze of light, after which there was darkness.”