BEATRICE



CHAPTER I

A MIST WRAITH

The autumn afternoon was fading into evening. It had been cloudy
weather, but the clouds had softened and broken up. Now they were lost
in slowly darkening blue. The sea was perfectly and utterly still. It
seemed to sleep, but in its sleep it still waxed with the rising tide.
The eye could not mark its slow increase, but Beatrice, standing upon
the farthest point of the Dog Rocks, idly noted that the long brown
weeds which clung about their sides began to lift as the water took
their weight, till at last the delicate pattern floated out and lay like
a woman's hair upon the green depth of sea. Meanwhile a mist was growing
dense and soft upon the quiet waters. It was not blown up from the west,
it simply grew like the twilight, making the silence yet more silent and
blotting away the outlines of the land. Beatrice gave up studying the
seaweed and watched the gathering of these fleecy hosts.

"What a curious evening," she said aloud to herself, speaking in a low
full voice. "I have not seen one like it since mother died, and that
is seven years ago. I've grown since then, grown every way," and she
laughed somewhat sadly, and looked at her own reflection in the quiet
water.