approached with difficulty, heads down and hustled by the furious blast
through which the rain now hissed and shot. Barlow and one of the boat's
crew were carrying Mrs. Maynard, and bringing up the rear of the huddling
oil-skins and sou'westers came Libby, soaked, and dripping as he walked.
His eyes and Grace's encountered with a mutual avoidance; but whatever
was their sense of blame, their victim had no reproaches to make herself.
She was not in need of restoration. She was perfectly alive, and
apparently stimulated by her escape from deadly peril to a vivid
conception of the wrong that had been done her. If the adventure had
passed off prosperously, she was the sort of woman to have owned to her
friend that she ought not to have thought of going. But the event had
obliterated these scruples, and she realized herself as a hapless
creature who had been thrust on to dangers from which she would have
shrunk. "Well, Grace!" she began, with a voice and look before which the
other quailed, "I hope you are satisfied! All the time I was clinging to
that wretched boat. I was wondering how you would feel. Yes, my last
thoughts were of you. I pitied you. I did n't see how you could ever have
peace again."

"Hold on, Mrs. Maynard!" cried Libby. "There's no, time for that, now.
What had best be done, Miss Green? Had n't she better be got up to the
house?"

"Yes, by all means," answered Grace.

"You might as well let me die here," Mrs. Maynard protested, as Grace
wrapped the blankets round her dripping dress. "I 'm as wet as I can be,
now."

Libby began to laugh at these inconsequences, to which he was probably