A Sovereign Remedy

he watched the green-blue, solid water slip over a half-sunk rock, and with unabated s

gesture. Yes! to work instead of droning out the days. To work as Herbert, the dead young husband of her dreams, had meant to work. It was seven years since she had lost him in Italy, whither they had gone on their honeymoon for his health. So he lay there dead through the breaking of a

ve been advisable. The death of her only brother in South Africa sent the few farms, which was all that remained of the great Pentreath estate

mbled rocks like some giant's house in ruins, gav

teful people with money, who brought their chauffeurs to the old serving-hall at the K

her wrists close, and held

a sepulchral

have you come from?"

Ned Blackborough, seating hi

en--I can't help the name, my d

here. That's what one always says, isn't it, when the visible

with your Buddhistic notions,

ll some day! Meanwhile I want to ask you a question: and as the butler told me you would be

ging her shoulders. "One must--but don't let's talk of i

ical and moral backing; "I always think of you here, looking out to sea, just under Betty Cam's chair----" he nodded his head backwards to the scaur of tu

aded him. "You said you had a qu

have room a

ift reproof--"Was there ever a

unfortunately I've--I'

"Oh Ned! How could you--wi

tor too--a rattling good fellow, one Peter Ramsay, whom we picked up--but of that also anon. Meanwhile these are at the 'Crooked Ewe' re

t come. There's still room in the ruins

uddenly, and lo

ed quietly. "How you

rtably, father and I, on what we have got, if it were not for this craze of his to

usand, but that fact lay ligh

," he remarked coolly, "though I own I didn

ly. "There it stands--despicable utterly--facing

lighthouse far away to the west, was steering straight up Channel. It seemed to glide evenly between sea and sky, and

Nell," he said, after a pause. "After all, half the whit

le. When I think what Jeff would have said--Jeff who loved every st

ica!" said Ned u

I lost everything for myself seven years ago, and what I have belongs to others. And there is so much in the past for which atonement should be made. You don't belong to the Pentreaths, you see; but they were a wild race--Bet

magination you've got!"

Hirsch came in. He is at the Keep now, arranging for a light railway. And oh, Ned! the place where w

ffs of Marine England were so disfigured everywhere; but that did

ded up to the garrets. It's got to be; for the farmers and the little shopkeepers at

uoted on the Stock Exchange now, and they are going to run up select jerry-built vill

I hadn't any intention of building it--but it's there--and let us c

"but I try to forget its exis

y," he sai

hing else was talked about day and night. But there--let's leave it alone! You can

doctor--he is so awfully keen. So full too of his work at Black

ce. "Not St. Peter's!" she cried. "How interesting---- Why! it is the best, they

t, Nell," he replied, shaking his head; "and you are a p

she aske

ughed, as he star

ticular resemblance to a chair at all. Still there it was that Betty Cam, the witch, used to sit, and

s a glow of light could still be seen at Betty Cam's chair, and that more than once the ghost of the ghostly Indiaman which, with all sails set, had sailed one awful winter's night

board for that trip, as, cresting the hill-to

n the chair, and gave

summer-houses, kiosks, bandstands, which were recklessly scattered about the bare soil. For it was bare. Gorse would grow there, or scented purple thyme, or any of the innumerable small aromatic herbs which the south-west wind loves, but grass and most ga

of inconsequent towers, gables, battlements, balconies. A lunatic asylum built by the patients! Utterly irrational, utterly out of touch with its surroundings of earth, and sea, and sky. Yes! quite antagonistic to the little fishing village in the bay below, to the supreme fairness of the coast trending

fa?ade a blaze of light showed, and round the arches hung with lamps in the t

full of false civilisation, full of lifts, lounges, bars, winter-gardens, a real up-to-date, twentieth-century substitute for a home, engineered

d to himself, as, turning at right angles, he set off over the moorland to

spare before taking up his new appointment, Ned had asked him to come on with him and see the prettie

to the hotel. There had been a committee of ways and means, and several people--notably Mr. Robert Jenkin, who was sitting next Helen--were over from We

r level of culture than any to which Mr. Jenkin could aspire, for he had begun and gone on with life for a considerable time as a local ironmon

ight tendency to size below the last button of his waistcoat, a tendency which gave him more concern than it need have done, since it really only showed in p

his interest in Sir Geoffrey's venture; on the principle of opposite

nding this rather too interesting to Mr. Jenkin, he settled down on Bayreuth, and gossiped Parsifal, becoming after a

, the remark was as near a proposal as

st. It'll play durin' meals, an' after dinner in the Pirates' Pavilion. An' I'm sure, Mrs. Tressilian, the conductor--he ain't really a Chinaman, m

yed him with dis

e asked suavely, his foreign accent coming

if you had a hankerin' after any particular tune, he'd play it. I don't know ab

e--queer! The Wrexhams he knew, of course. She went in for spiritualism and he for

his

s and such vague comfortings regarding "rest," and being "with his mother," and of the youthful company whom "the gods love,"--comfortings with which humanity has always met bereavement, had not only been on his lips, but in his heart. He had always been an optimist--and now?

him that her motor, which she had bought in Paris, was the only one of its kind in England, and th

ttes on the lawn. A new régime certainly for the kindly old Keep, where, as a boy, he had spent his holidays with hi

ose smart women as a bassoon sounds against a violin. Ay! and in the winter sou'-westers, the rush and hush of the sea blent with the rush and hush of the leaves. He could imagine Betty Cam--h'm, that was Helen's fault for bein

wards the wilderness of garden beyond. And the thought of money bringing the thought of Aura, he smiled,

why should he not have

t her assertion that the one wish of her life ("since my husband's death seven years ago," being interpolated with t

owly. "I rather doubt your being fit f

ure you," she replied, with a smile of great tolerance, "I dares

Scotch accent gave the qu

ly----" she a

," he replied

"but I really do not thin

at I am a doctor, and, Mrs. Tressilian, your nervous system is at the pre

librium! Reall

to be hypnotised, you would be clairvoyant. I shouldn't wonder if you would be able to project yo

to do with nursing?

call it?--unpractical. You have a gift--a great gift

at conclusion?" she asked, i

she could not help admiring: it was so shapely, so strong,

ou mean that it is sentimental and unpractical to

ost to amber. There was a world of gentle raillery in

have made with your ardent imagination to some grovelling slave tied down, as I am, by the nose, to the body of things! But that is anothe

asked almo

en you fall back on reserve-force, and having exhausted that, feel exhausted. We doctors nowadays are helpless before the feeling of hustle. We prescribe rest-cures, but you can worry as much, perhaps more, on the flat of the back! The remedy lies with the p

ey feeling baffled. She had known about and had meant to avoid this tea; but something in the

gust not only going to the hotel, but goin

inging with it an unwonted flush of colour, she was forced to admit that the place had its charms; that it was not all vulgarised. There was laughter and music, of course (both of them loud), about the tea-tables, but at the further end com

vivacity. Still, even at her best she could never have touched the exceeding brightness and beauty of her little daughter Maidie. She was incomparable. A little vivid tropical bird flitting about Sir Geoffrey, chattering, her small ro

, yellow and red-brown in her d

s stroking his soft moleskin knees, and swingi

way and leave 'oo, Sir Geoffley, will we, mumsie? We'em goin' to

ently that she failed, as it were, to do anything at all.

t I'm afraid dadda can't manage it. You see, Mrs. Tressilian, darling old Dick is only hom

was now on the floor, fondling the big curly retriever who was always Sir Geoffrey's sh

ith fearless eye. Something in the childless woman's heart went out to her, and beyond her again to the grave far away under th

, saying, 'Mumsie and Maidie waiting for y

it?" said the

It was only supposing

rner. I want him to stop, an' then I'd go on the ship too, an' sail, an' sail, an' sail." She had forgot

father, don't you, Maid

ock phrase. "An' I love Sir Geoffley 'normous much too. We 're goin' to live to

les, and dimples. His face relaxed from the hard look of pressing anxiety it had worn all day. He ca

!" he echoed; "Never fear, M

en!" he said, "I've some business here which may keep

is eyes, but kept

ntly, "I want to walk home with Ne

ed has found a sick Indian friend upstairs

It isn't fair--on him. Even coming here----

is a good fellow at bottom. I wouldn't ask it otherwise. It would free me--from you don't know

he really is in some ways a good fellow," she said,

fection in his eye for a moment, then str

d may drop in any mome

This morning we saw such a big vessel passing, right away

it wasn't, you see," she said; "for she's--(here she

nly supposi

. 'Free times 'free is 'free," quoted

e one! Next time, I suppose, daddy will have put my nose o

ever!" she cried, stamping her foot wilfully; "we'

ssion, and Sir Geoffrey's thin, ruddy f

sheepishly. "Never you fear! I'll keep