imagination, and the secret ejaculations that have met them. How
many times on that brief journey had not Gillian seen her father
dying, her sisters in despair, her mother crushed in the train,
wrecked in the steamer, perishing of the climate, or arriving to find
all over and dying of the shock; yet all was varied by speculations
on the great thing that was to offer itself to be done, and the
delight it would give, and when the train slackened, anxieties were
merged in the care for bags, baskets, and umbrellas.

Rockstone and Rockquay had once been separate places---a little
village perched on a cliff of a promontory, and a small fishing
hamlet within the bay, but these had become merged in one, since
fashion had chosen them as a winter resort. Speculators blasted away
such of the rocks as they had not covered with lodging-houses and
desirable residences. The inhabitants of the two places had their
separate churches, and knew their own bounds perfectly well; but to
the casual observer, the chief distinction between them was that
Rockstone was the more fashionable, Rockquay the more commercial,
although the one had its shops, the other its handsome crescents and
villas. The station was at Rockquay, and there was an uphill drive
to reach Rockstone, where the two Miss Mohuns had been early
inhabitants---had named their cottage Beechcroft after their native
home, and, to justify the title, had flanked the gate with two copper
beeches, which had attained a fair growth, in spite of sea winds,
perhaps because sheltered by the house on the other side.

The garden reached out to the verge of the cliff, or rather to a low
wall, with iron rails and spikes at the top, and a narrow, rather
giddy path beyond. There was a gate in the wall, the key of which
Aunt Jane kept in her own pocket, as it gave near access to certain