So, light-hearted enough to amaze the elders who knew the secret, he jumped up to go with the rest of the party to the cliff walk, where the brilliant ships could best be seen.  Lance, though his headache was, as Geraldine said, visible on his brow, declared that night air and sea-breeze were the best remedy, and went in charge of the two boys, lest his dainty Ariel should make an excursion over the rocks; and the four young ladies were escorted by Gerald and the engineer.

The elders were much too tired for further adventures, and Geraldine and Marilda were too intimate to feel bound to talk.  Only a few words dropped now and then about Emilia and her hospital, where she was to be left for a year, while Fernan with Marilda visited his American establishments, and on their return would decide whether she would return, or whether they would take Franceska, or a younger one, in her stead.  The desertion put Marilda out of heart, and she sighed what a pity it was that the girl would not listen to young Brown.

Meanwhile, Clement was making Ferdinand go over with him Edgar’s words about his marriage.  They had all been written down immediately after his death, and had been given to Felix with the certificates of the marriage and birth and of the divorce, and they were now no doubt with other documents and deeds in the strong-box at Vale Leston Priory.  Fernan could only repeat the words which had been burnt in on his memory, and promise to hunt up the evidence of the form and manner of the dissolution of the marriage at Chicago.  Like Clement himself, he very much doubted whether the allegation would not break down in some important point, but he wished Gerald to be assured that if the worst came to the worst, he would never be left destitute, since that first meeting—-the baptism, and the receiving him from the dying father-—amounted to an adoption sacred in his eyes.

Then, seeing how worn-out Clement looked, he abetted Sibby and Geraldine, in shutting their patient safe up in his bedroom, not to be “mislested” any more that night, said Sibby.  So he missed the rush of the return.  First came the two sober sisters, Anna and Emilia, only sorry that Aunt Cherry had not seen the lovely sea, the exquisite twinkle of silvered waves as the moon rose, and then the outburst of coloured lights, taking many forms, and the brilliant fireworks darting to and fro, describing curves, bursting and scattering their sparks.  Emilia had, however, begun by the anxious question—-

“Nan, what is it with Gerald?”

“I don’t quite know.  I suspect Dolores has somehow teased him, though it is not like her.”

“Then there is something in it?”

“I can’t help believing so, but I don’t believe it has come to anything.”

“And is she not a most disagreeable girl!  Those black eyebrows do look so sullen and thunderous.”

“Oh no, Emmie, I thought so at first, but she can’t help her eyebrows; and when you come to know her there is a vast deal in her-— thought, and originality, and purpose.  I am sure it has been good for Gerald.  He has seemed more definite and in earnest lately, less as if he were playing with everything, with all views all round.”