"Two hours?"

"Yes."

A sudden impulse, unreasoned and unreasonable, in which there seemed hope
of some such atonement, or expiation, as the same ascetic nature would
once have found in fasting or the scourge, prevailed with her. She rose.
"Mr. Libby," she panted, "if you will let me, I should like to go with
you in your boat. Do you think it will be rough?"

"No, it's a light breeze; just right. You need n't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid. I should not care if it were rough! I should not care if
it stormed! I hope it--I will ask mother to stay with Mrs. Maynard."

Mrs. Breen had not been pleased to have her daughter in charge of Mrs.
Maynard's case, but she had not liked her giving it up. She had said more
than once that she had no faith in Dr. Mulbridge. She willingly consented
to Grace's prayer, and went down into Mrs. Maynard's room, and insinuated
misgivings in which the sick woman found so much reason that they began
for the first time to recognize each other's good qualities. They decided
that the treatment was not sufficiently active, and that she should
either have something that would be more loosening to the cough, or some
application--like mustard plasters--to her feet, so as to take away that
stuffed feeling about the head.

At that hour of the afternoon, when most of the ladies were lying down in
their rooms, Grace met no one on the beach but Miss Gleason and Mrs.
Alger, who rose from their beds of sand under the cliff at her passage