“You hardly know where you are?” David, speaking for the first time, suggested.

“Ah, I know I’m at Wastewater!” she answered, eagerly. “Every inch of the way I’ve been getting more and more excited. The sea—you can’t know what it meant to me! I could just see it, in the dusk. I can’t believe that to-morrow it will be there, right outside the windows, right below the garden!”

“Yet you’ve been on the sea all the way from France,” Flora said, repressively. Flora disliked enthusiasm.

“But not our sea, as we know it here at Wastewater,” Gabrielle answered, more quietly. “To-morrow I’ll walk along our shore and out the little gate on to the cliffs toward Tinsalls—do you ever walk that way now, David? And Keyport! I must go to Keyport, too.”

Her voice faltered on the last phrases a little uncertainly, and David interpreted aright her quick flush and the glance she sent her aunt. Tom’s name was indissolubly linked with that of Keyport, for his father had first sought him, and had always suspected that his escape had been planned there. And since Uncle Roger’s death, Flora, whose own daughter’s fortune[29] hinged upon Tom’s return or non-return, had not encouraged much hopeful speculation about him among the younger members of the family. But Flora had been rooted securely for many placid years now, and she only commented mildly:

[29]

“Keyport. That’s where your uncle first hunted for poor Tom. Dear me, how many years ago!”

“No word—never any word,” David said, shaking his head in answer to Gabrielle’s quick questioning glance. “We won’t hear, now. The war split up the whole world; there must have been hundreds of lives lost upon the sea, and upon the land, too, for that matter, with no record left anywhere.”

“Think of it—Tom!” Gabrielle said, under her breath. And for a long moment they were all silent. Then Flora asked the newcomer if she would like to go upstairs.

“You’ll hardly have time to change, now,” said Flora. “One of the girls has made the old blue room ready for you. Call Maria if you need anything.”

“Maria! Then she didn’t marry her sailor!” Gabrielle said, laughing as she rose. “And Margret’s not here any longer?”

“She comes and goes; she’s pretty old now,” David said, as Flora merely seemed to be waiting patiently for Gabrielle to go.

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