"You have never liked the girl," he said. "But she is no more mad than you are. She was in our charge, and we have been bad guardians; and when your brother comes——"
"When he comes I will meet him," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "it is between him and me."
The old man gave her a quick furtive glance.
"You have never wanted any one else to come between you and him," he said; and Mrs. Russelthorpe winced.
"We'll talk of it no more," she cried. "Meg is dead to us."
"Yes," said Uncle Russelthorpe, "but that won't prevent there being the devil to pay."
There is—or rather there was when Margaret Deane was young—a fishing hamlet on the Kentish coast that consisted of just one line of tarred wooden huts, and a square-towered chapel.
The women would put their candles in the windows after the sun had dipped, that the twinkling friendly eyes of their houses might guide the fishermen home; but whether it was day or night Sheerhaven had always the air of a watcher by the sea.
The glow of dawn was just warming the grey water when a boat grated on Sheerhaven beach, and a man and a woman climbed slowly up the yellow shelving bank. When they had gone a few steps the man turned and held out his hand. "You are over weary, an' it's no wonder," he said. "Best let me help you."