And drawn by pity for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge, full of a lively desire to pacify and console.  But here the soft breeze met and caressed him, and the whole plain of the tranquil sea came into view—­turquoise shot with pearl, as Damaris recently figured it, and fringed with topaz where waves, a few inches high and clear as glass, broke on the yellow sand at the back of the Bar just below.

“How wonderfully lovely!” he exclaimed, carried out of himself by the extreme fairness of the scene.  And, his hands in his trouser pockets he stood staring, while once again the pull of home, of England, of tenderness for all that which he was about to leave, dimmed his eyes and raised a lump in his throat.

“Upon my word, you must be difficult to please if this place doesn’t please you or come up to your requirements, Damaris,” he said, presently sitting down beside her.  “No Arabian Nights palace in Asia, I grant you; yet in its own humbler and—­dare I say?—­less showy, manner not easy to beat.  Breathe this enchanting air.  See the heavenly tints with which our good dirty useful old Channel has adorned itself.  Can you ask for more, you insatiable person, in the way of beauty?”

Then, slightly ashamed of his outburst, Tom practised a delightful smile, at once sentimental and flirtatious.

“No, on second thoughts, my dear princess, I keep my commiseration for my wretched self—­every crumb of it.  For I am the lonely exile—­that is, I am just about to be—­not you.  Be advised, don’t quarrel with the good gifts of the gods.  Deadham Hard is frankly entrancing.  How willingly would I put off taking ship for your vaunted India, and spend the unending cycles of eternity here—­with you, well understood—­in this most delectable spot instead.”

Whereupon Damaris, with mingled gravity and haste, her head bent, so that hat-crown and hat-brim were presented to the young man’s observation rather than her face, proceeded to explain she had spoken not of the present but of the past.  From the time Sir Charles returned to inhabit it, The Hard was transformed; his presence conferring interest and dignity upon it, rendering it a not unworthy dwelling-place indeed—­should any such happen that way—­for sages, conquerors, or even kings.  He cared for the little property, a fact to her all sufficient.  For him it held the charm of old associations.  The pleasantest days of his boyhood were spent here with Thomas Clarkson Verity, his great uncle—­who eventually left him the property—­nor had he ever failed later to visit it when home on leave.  In pious remembrance of that distant era and of his entertaining and affectionate, if somewhat eccentric, host and friend he forbade any alteration in the house or grounds.  It continued to-day just as old Mr. Verity left it.  There was no break, even in details of furnishing or arrangement, with the past.  This,