those letters. It is not my father's habit to forget a promise. Most
likely they were written last night before he went to bed. He sleeps
badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by
reading and doing his correspondence until late."

As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting
jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the
hem of her dress.

"There--that's better. Now I am tidy. Shall we go home, cousin Tom?"
she asked.

Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly,
but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened
towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's
length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more
convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity--and at
her expense--regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had
sprung on him.

"I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness," he said. "It
must be horribly trying and depressing. I am glad, in a way, you have
told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden
from the study last night, or rather very early this morning. It would be
about two o'clock. I put down his appearance to another cause, and"--

He smiled at her, delightfully ingratiating, assaugingly apologetic.

"Shall I own it?--one which, frankly, struck me as a little upsetting and
the reverse of pleasant."