It may be that she was the one who felt their silence most irksome, but the girl broke it at last with the following feminine piece of injustice:
"How dull you _must_ find it here, after the life you've been accustomed to! I'm sure I wonder you don't have a fit of the spleen. I've heard grandfather say he felt it dreadfully at first."
"Mistress Carew," he answered--while the blue eyes shot a reproachful glance, that almost said, why don't you call me Nelly?--"Mistress Carew, I am _not_ your grandfather!"
"You've been grave enough," she replied, with a little nervous laugh, "this while past, to be anybody's grandfather. I've been wondering what you could see down Channel yonder that seemed to take up all your attention!"
This ought to have been encouraging. She was watching him, then, following the direction of his eyes, trying to make out his thoughts. Strange to say, John Garnet, usually so debonair and ready of speech, seemed at a loss for a reply.
"I was wondering"--he hesitated and looked down, while Nelly, whose work had been idly folded in her lap, began plying her needle very fast--"I was wondering whether it could really be less than a week since I first came to Porlock?"
She had been pondering the same marvel herself, but took care not to express her astonishment.
"It's not--not at all the kind of place you expected, is it?"
Nelly thought it strange that her heart should beat, and her breath come quick, in asking so simple a question.
He tried to catch her eye, but she steadily refused to look at him, while he answered, "I thought it would be a prison and a purgatory. I never dreamed it was to prove a Para--"
He stopped short without finishing the word, for she had grown deadly pale, and her blue eyes, looking over his head at something beyond and behind him, were dilated with actual fear. Turning in the same direction, he could detect no more alarming object than a stout square-built man, in a black riding suit, walking leisurely towards them through the soft sand.
"Good-morrow, Mistress Carew," said Abner Gale's harsh voice, while the scowl that accompanied his greeting gave it more the character of a ban than a blessing. "They told me in the village I should find you here or hereabouts, but I didn't think to see you so well attended. My service to _you_, sir," scanning John Garnet from head to foot. "A warm day this, but pleasant enough to be taking a young woman a walk by the sea-shore."