leaving Adrian smiling with amusement at her specious manner of announcing that his own bedroom—the only one available for the purpose in the ruins—was being duly converted into a lady's bower.

"It grieves me to think," mused he after a pause, while René still bursting with ungratified curiosity, hung about the further end of the room, "of the terrible anxiety they must be in about you at Pulwick, and of our absolute inability to convey to them the good news of your safety."

The girl gave a little laugh, with her lips over the cup, and shrugged her shoulders but said nothing.

"My God, yes," quoth René cheerfully from his corner. "Notre Dame d'Auray has watched over Mademoiselle to-day. She would not permit the daughter to die like the mother. And now we have got her ladyship we shall keep her too. This, if your honour remembers his sailor's knowledge, looks like a three-days' gale."

"You are right, I fancy," said Sir Adrian, going over to him and looking out of the window. "Mademoiselle de Savenaye will have to take up her abode in our lighthouse for a longer time than she bargained. I do not remember hearing the breakers thunder in our cave so loud for many years. I trust," continued the light-keeper, coming down to his fair guest again, "that you may be[62] able to endure such rough hospitality as ours must needs be!"

[62]

"It has been much more pleasant and I feel far more welcome already than at Pulwick," remarked Mademoiselle, between two deliberate sips, and in no way discomposed, it seemed, at the prospect held out to her.

"How?" cried Sir Adrian with a start, while the unwonted flush mounted to his forehead, "you, not welcome at Pulwick! Have they not welcomed a child of Cécile de Savenaye at Pulwick?... Thank God, then, for the accident that has sent you to me!"

The girl looked at him with an inquisitive smile in her eyes; there was something on her lips which she restrained. Surrendering her cup, she remarked demurely:

"Yes, it was a lucky accident, was it not, that there was some one to offer shelter to the outcast from the sea? It is like a tale of old. It is delightful. Delightful, too, not to be drowned, safe and sound ... and welcome in this curious old place."

She had risen and, as the cloak fell from her steaming garments, again she shivered.

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