He had never seen her in this mood before. He was intensely interested.

“And you have a presentiment, Lady Monica?”

She bent her head, but did not speak.

“And having said so much, will you not say more, and tell me what it is?”

[102]

[102]

She stopped still, looked earnestly at him for a moment, and then passed her hand wearily across her face.

“Sometimes I think,” she said, “that it will be the great sea, my childhood’s friend, that will bring to me the greatest sorrow of my life; for is it not the emblem of separation? Please take me in now. I think a storm is very sad and terrible.”

He looked into her pale, sweet face, and perhaps there was something in his glance that touched her, for as they stood in the hall at last she looked up with a shadowy smile, and said:

“Thank you very much. You have been very kind to me.”

That smile and those few simple words were like a ray of sunlight in his path.

[103]

[103]

CHAPTER THE SIXTH. IN PERIL.

Perhaps there was some truth in what Monica had said about her ability to presage coming trouble. At least she was haunted just now by a strange shadow of approaching change that future events justified only too well.

She often caught her father’s glance resting upon her with a strange, searching wistfulness, with something almost of pleading and appeal in his face. She had a suspicion that Arthur sometimes looked at her almost in the same way, as if he too would ask some favour of her, could he but bring his mind to do so. [104]She felt that she was watched by all the household, that something was expected of her, and was awaited with a sort 

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