the honeycombed rocks while the tide hissed and whispered in the long
tresses of the seaweed.

My clearest and dearest recollections were of those earlier days, before
any fixed hopes and ideas had brought with them other possibilities. But I
thought too of Jeanne Falla's party, and of young Torode, and I wondered
and wondered what might be happening over there, with me given up for dead
and Torode free to work his will so far as he was able.

Some comfort I found in thought of Aunt Jeanne, in whose wisdom I had much
faith; and in George Hamon, who knew my hopes and hated Torode; and in my
mother and my grandfather and Krok, who would render my love every help she
might ask, but were not so much in the way of it as the others. But, if
they all deemed me dead,--as by this time I feared they must, though,
indeed, they had refused to do so before,--my time might already be past,
and that which I cherished as hope might be even now but dead ashes.

At times I wondered if Jean Le Marchant had not had his suspicions of
Torode's treacheries, and how he would regard the young Torode as suitor
for Carette in that case. I was sure in my own mind that her father and
brothers would never yield her to anything but what they deemed the best
for her. But their ideas on that head might differ widely from my own, and
I drew small comfort from the thought.

And Carette herself? I hugged to myself the remembrance of her last
farewell. I lived on it. It might mean nothing more than the memory of our
old friendship. It might mean everything. I chose to believe it meant
everything. And I knew that even if I were dead she would never listen to
young Torode if a glimmer of the truth came to her ears, for she was the
soul of honour.