through!" replied
Harriet indifferently, as her eyes scanned the scene before them. "There’s the Baroness! She’s beckoning to me! Good-bye!" and without a
word of sympathy or comfort, she rushed away to join her friends.

"Like the way of the world!" thought Margaret, as she watched the girl
skimming over the sands, "but somehow--I didn’t think she would be so
heartless!"

Miss Leyton and her _fiancé_ had strolled off after breakfast to take a walk, and Mrs. Pullen went back to her own room, and sat down quietly
to needlework. She was becoming very anxious for Doctor Phillips’
arrival; had even written to England to ask him to hurry it if
possible--for her infant, though not positively ill, rejected her food
so often that she was palpably thinner and weaker.

After she had sat there for some time, she took up her field glasses,
to survey the bathers on the beach. She had often done so before,
when confined to the hotel--it afforded her amusement to watch their
faces and antics. On the present occasion, she had no difficulty in
distinguishing the form of the Baroness Gobelli, looking enormous
as, clad in a most conspicuous bathing costume, she waddled from her
machine into the water, loudly calling attention to her appearance,
from all assembled on the sands, as she went. The Baron, looking little
less comical, advanced to conduct his spouse down to the water, whilst
after them flew a slight boyish figure in yellow, with a mane of dark
hair hanging down her back, which Margaret immediately recognised as
that of Harriet Brandt.

She was dancing about in the shallow water, shrieking whenever she made
a false step, and clinging hold of the Baron’s hand, when Margaret
saw another gentleman come up to them, and join in the ring. She
turned the glasses upon him and saw to her amazement that it was
her brother-in-law. Her first feeling was that of annoyance. There
was nothing extraordinary or improper, in his joining the Baroness’s
party--men and women bathed promiscuously in Heyst, and no one thought
anything of it. But that Ralph should voluntarily mix himself up with
the Gobellis, after Elinor’s particular request that he should keep
aloof from them, was a much more serious matter. And by the way,
that reminded her, where was Elinor the while? Margaret could not
discern her anywhere upon the sands, and wondered if she had also been
persuaded to bathe. She watched Captain Pullen, evidently trying to

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