now and again that she could so arrange her duties as to allow of a
flight with Bernel--a flight which always took the way to the sea and
developed presently into a bathing revel wherein she flung cares and
clothes to the winds, or into a fishing excursion, in which pleasure and
profit and somewhat of pain were evenly mixed.

For, though she loved the sea and ate fresh-caught fish with as much
gusto as any, she hated seeing them caught--almost as much as she hated
having her fowls or piglets slaughtered for eating purposes, and never
would touch them--a delicacy of feeling at which Bernel openly scoffed
but could not laugh her out of.

She had sentiments also regarding the rabbits Bernel shot on the cliffs,
but being wild, and she herself having had no hand in their upbringing
and not having known them intimately, she accepted them as natural
provision, though not without compunctions at times concerning possible
families of orphans left totally unprovided for.

When she did permit herself a few hours off duty she did it with a
whole-hearted enjoyment--approaching the naïve abandon of
childhood--which, to Gard's sober restraint, when he was graciously
permitted to witness it, was wholly charming.

By degrees, and especially after her father's tragic death, Nance's
feelings towards the stranger had perceptibly changed.

He might be an alien, an Englishman; but he was at all events a
Cornishman, and she had heard say that the men of Cornwall and of the
Islands and of the Bretagne had much in common, just as their rugged
coasts had. And England, after all, was allied to the Islands, belonged