A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

As a matter of fact, she did not try very much. She told Beryl Tregony that she had no desire to be a tame kitten, and since she was responsible to no one, she followed in the main the prompting of her own heart.

It was by no means difficult to slip away unobserved, and to be absent for hours on the stretch without being missed. She had her own rooms at the big house, and often when she was supposed to be quietly reading somewhere, she was out on the cliffs or down on the shore searching for rare flowers or shells, or else talking to the fishermen.

She found life terribly dull after her return from London. Yet, on the whole, she was not unhappy. The great sweep of the Atlantic had an unfailing attraction for her. The cliffs were glorious, and offered infinite scope for adventure. While the people of St. Gaved—particularly the fishermen—caught her fancy amazingly, and she became a prime favourite with them all.

Here was a young lady of the upper circle, a distant relative of the squire, who was not in the least exclusive or proud; who went in and out among the ordinary toiling folk as though she was one of them, and who had always a smile and a cheery word for the humblest. It was so different from the Tregony tradition, that it took their honest hearts by storm.

Rufus Sterne considered himself particularly unfortunate that when she came into St. Gaved he always missed her. Three or four times he heard of her being in the town—it was really only a big village, but the St. Gavedites all spoke of it as a town; but he was either in his workshop or away directing the operations of others; consequently, she came and went without giving him a chance of renewing their acquaintance.

"Not that it mattered," he said to himself. She was nothing to him. She belonged to a circle far removed from his. Yet for some reason he was curious to look again into her bright, laughing eyes, and listen to her naive and unconventional talk. Moreover, when he heard people talking about her, and praising her good looks and charming freeness of manner, he had a feeling that he had been cheated out of something to which he was justly entitled.

What added to the interest excited by the pretty young American was the fact that nobody had been able to find out the exact relationship in which she stood to the Tregony family. Neither had anybody been able to discover why she had come, or how long she intended to stay.

Any number of guesses had been hazarded, but they were only guesses at best. Some said she had been sent to England by her parents simply to learn society ways and manners. Others, that her parents were dead, and that her mother being related to Sir Charles, the latter had taken her out of charity. Mrs. Tuke, who, in the one glimpse she got of her, had been greatly impressed by the richness of her attire, ventured the opinion that she was an heiress in her own right, and that Sir Charles, who was not noted for his generosity, had not undertaken to be her guardian for nothing. But all these guesses lacked the essential thing, and that was authority. Sir Charles was as close as an oyster about his own family affairs. Moreover, he would no more think of talking to anyone in St. Gaved about his visitors than of taking a journey to the moon. And if he thought they were so impertinent as to desire to know, that would be a double reason why he should, under no circumstances, allude to the matter.

Madeline might have given the information desired if her new acquaintances had had the courage to question her. But they were a little shy in her presence as yet; in some instances they were completely over-awed. She was so bright, so quick, so confident, that she almost took their breath away. They felt like fools in her presence.

This was how matters stood when Rufus discovered her on a narrow ledge of rock high up the cliffs, unable either to advance or retreat. She had slipped away from the Hall unobserved after going to her own room ostensibly to write letters. Consequently, she had not been missed, and was not likely to be until the family met for dinner.