"Why, it is quite late!" she exclaimed, forgetting to thank him in her surprise.
"Are you all alone here?" he asked.
"I was waiting for some friends," she answered, "but they have not come. They must have been detained."
She began to walk back as she spoke, and the gentleman turned too perforce, for the tide was close upon them.
"Let me help you," he said, holding out his hand, which was noticeably white and well-shaped; "the rocks are rough and slippery."
"I can manage, thank you," Beth answered. "I am accustomed to them."
Beth involuntarily resolved herself into a young lady the moment she addressed this man, and spoke now with the self-possession of one accustomed to courtesies. Even at that age her soft cultivated voice and easy assurance of manner, and above all her laugh, which was not the silvery laugh of fiction, but the soundless laugh of good society, marked the class to which she belonged; and as he stumbled along beside her, her new acquaintance wondered how it happened that she was at once so well-bred and so shabbily dressed. He began to question her guardedly.
"Do you know Rainharbour well?" he asked.
"I live here," Beth answered.
"Then I suppose you know every one in the place," he pursued.