Through the narrow ravine between Camber Rock and Round Island the water races and boils and roars when the tide runs strongly. Now, it was flowing gently—almost still. The sun was so low that the rock on the east side was obscured by the great mass of Round Island: the channel was quite dark. The dipping of the oars echoed along the black walls of rock; but overhead there was the soft and glowing sky, and in the light blue already appeared two or three stars.
'A strange thing has happened to me, Armorel,' Roland said, speaking low, as if in a church—'a very strange and wonderful thing. It is a thing which connects me with you and with your people and with the Island of Samson. You remember the story told us one evening—the evening before I left you—by the Ancient Lady?'
'Of course. She told that story so often, and I used to suffer such agonies of shame that my ancestor should act so basely, and such terrors in thinking of the fate of his soul, that I am not likely to forget the story.'
'You remember that she mistook me for Robert Fletcher?'
'Yes; I remember.'
'She was not so very far wrong, Armorel; because, you see, I am Robert Fletcher's great-grandson.'
'Oh! Roland! Is it possible?'
'I suppose that there may have been some resemblance. She forgot the present, and was carried back in imagination to the past, eighty years ago.'
'Oh! And you did not know?'
'If you think of it, Armorel, very few middle-class people are able to tell the maiden name of their grandmother. We do not keep our genealogies, as we should.'