CHAPTER III

"ALL ASHORE"


Beth De Graf was a puzzle to all who knew her. She was a puzzle even to
herself, and was wont to say, indifferently, that the problem was not
worth a solution. For this beautiful girl of fifteen was somewhat bitter
and misanthropic, a condition perhaps due to the uncongenial atmosphere
in which she had been reared. She was of dark complexion and her big
brown eyes held a sombre and unfathomable expression. Once she had
secretly studied their reflection in a mirror, and the eyes awed and
frightened her, and made her uneasy. She had analyzed them much as if
they belonged to someone else, and wondered what lay behind their mask,
and what their capabilities might be.

But this morbid condition mostly affected her when she was at home,
listening to the unpleasant bickerings of her father and mother, who
quarrelled constantly over trifles that Beth completely ignored. Her
parents seemed like two ill tempered animals confined in the same cage,
she thought, and their snarls had long since ceased to interest her.

This condition had, of course, been infinitely worse in all those
dreadful years when they were poverty stricken. Since Uncle John had
settled a comfortable income on his niece the grocer was paid promptly
and Mrs. De Graf wore a silk dress on Sundays and held her chin a little
higher than any other of the Cloverton ladies dared do. The Professor,