“Do you enjoy staying by the seaside?  I should rather ask.”

The reply was “Yes,” rather breathed out in a deep inspiration than spoken in a sound.  The sands heaved and trembled beneath Ruth.  The figures near her vanished into strange nothingness; the sounds of their voices were as distant sounds in a dream, while the echo of one voice thrilled through and through.  She could have caught at his arm for support, in the awful dizziness which wrapped her up, body and soul.  That voice!  No! if name, and face, and figure were all changed, that voice was the same which had touched her girlish heart, which had spoken most tender words of love, which had won, and wrecked her, and which she had last heard in the low mutterings of fever.  She dared not look round to see the figure of him who spoke, dark as it was.  She knew he was there—­she heard him speak in the manner in which he used to address strangers years ago; perhaps she answered him, perhaps she did not—­God knew.  It seemed as if weights were tied to her feet—­as if the steadfast rocks receded—­as if time stood still;—­it was so long, so terrible, that path across the reeling sand.

At the foot of the rocks they separated.  Mr. Bradshaw, afraid lest dinner should cool, preferred the shorter way for himself and his friends.  On Elizabeth’s account, the girls were to take the longer and easier path, which wound up-wards through a rocky field, where larks’ nests abounded, and where wild thyme and heather were now throwing out their sweets to the soft night air.

The little girls spoke in eager discussion of the strangers.  They appealed to Ruth, but Ruth did not answer, and they were too impatient to convince each other to repeat the question.  The first little ascent from the sands to the field surmounted, Ruth sat down suddenly and covered her face with her hands.  This was so unusual—­their wishes, their good, was so invariably the rule of motion or of rest in their walks—­that the girls, suddenly checked, stood silent and affrighted in surprise.  They were still more startled when Ruth wailed aloud some inarticulate words.

“Are you not well, dear Mrs. Denbigh?” asked Elizabeth gently, kneeling down on the grass by Ruth.

She sat facing the west.  The low watery twilight was on her face as she took her hands away.  So pale, so haggard, so wild and wandering a look the girls had never seen on human countenance before.

“Well! what are you doing here with me?  You should not be with me,” said she, shaking her head slowly.

They looked at each other.

“You are sadly tired,” said Elizabeth soothingly.  “Come home, and let me help you to bed.  I will tell papa you are ill, and ask him to send for a doctor.”  Ruth looked at her as if she did not understand the meaning of her words.  No more she did at first.  But by-and-by the dulled brain began to think most vividly and rapidly, and she spoke in a sharp way which deceived the girls into a belief that nothing had been the matter.