Perhaps Islington did not overhear the speaker; perhaps, if he did, the criticism was not new.  He turned carelessly away, and sauntered out on the road to the sea.  Thence he strolled along the sands toward the cliffs, where, meeting an impediment in the shape of a garden wall, he leaped it with a certain agile, boyish ease and experience, and struck across an open lawn toward the rocks again.  The best society of Greyport were not early risers, and the spectacle of a trespasser in an evening dress excited only the criticism of grooms hanging about the stables, or cleanly housemaids on the broad verandas that in Greyport architecture dutifully gave upon the sea.  Only once, as he entered the boundaries of Cliffwood Lodge, the famous seat of Renwyck Masterman, was he aware of suspicious scrutiny; but a slouching figure that vanished quickly in the lodge offered no opposition to his progress.  Avoiding the pathway to the lodge, Islington kept along the rocks until, reaching a little promontory and rustic pavilion, he sat down and gazed upon the sea.

And presently an infinite peace stole upon him.  Except where the waves lapped lazily the crags below, the vast expanse beyond seemed unbroken by ripple, heaving only in broad ponderable sheets, and rhythmically, as if still in sleep.  The air was filled with a luminous haze that caught and held the direct sunbeams.  In the deep calm that lay upon the sea, it seemed to Islington that all the tenderness of culture, magic of wealth, and spell of refinement that for years had wrought upon that favored shore had extended its gracious influence even here.  What a pampered and caressed old ocean it was; cajoled, flattered, and feted where it lay!  An odd recollection of the turbid Stanislaus hurrying by the ascetic pines, of the grim outlines of Deadwood Hill, swam before his eyes, and made the yellow green of the velvet lawn and graceful foliage seem almost tropical by contrast.  And, looking up, a few yards distant he beheld a tall slip of a girl gazing upon the sea,—­Blanche Masterman.

She had plucked somewhere a large fan-shaped leaf, which she held parasol-wise, shading the blond masses of her hair, and hiding her gray eyes.  She had changed her festal dress, with its amplitude of flounce and train, for a closely fitting half-antique habit whose scant outlines would have been trying to limbs less shapely, but which prettily accented the graceful curves and sweeping lines of this Greyport goddess.  As Islington rose, she came toward him with a frankly outstretched hand and unconstrained manner.  Had she observed him first?  I don’t know.

They sat down together on a rustic seat, Miss Blanche facing the sea, and shading her eyes with the leaf.

“I don’t really know how long I have been sitting here,” said Islington, “or whether I have not been actually asleep and dreaming.  It seemed too lovely a morning to go to bed.  But you?”

From behind the leaf, it appeared that Miss Blanche, on retiring, had been pursued by a hideous winged bug which defied the efforts of herself and maid to dislodge.  Odin, the Spitz dog, had insisted upon scratching at the door.  And it made her eyes red to sleep in the morning.  And she had an early call to make.  And the sea looked lovely.