“It is beautiful sometimes,” the girl answered.  “I love it when the creeks are full, and the April sun is shining, and the spring seems to draw all manner of living things and colours from the marsh and the pasturage lands.  I love it when the sea changes its colour as the clouds pass over the sun, and the wind blows from the west.  The place is well enough then.  But there are times when it is nothing but a great wilderness of mud, and the grey mists come blowing in, and one is cold here, cold to the bone.  Then I hate the place worse than ever.”

“Have you ever tried to go away for a time?” Jeanne asked.

“I went once to London,” the girl said, turning her head a little away.  “I should have stayed there, I think, if things had turned out as I had expected, but they didn’t, and my father died suddenly, so I came home to take care of the farm.”

Jeanne nodded sympathetically.  She was beginning to wonder why this girl had come out from the house with the obvious intention of speaking to her.  She stood by her side, not exactly awkward, but still not wholly at her ease, her hands clasped behind her straight back, her black eyebrows drawn together in a little uneasy frown.  Her coarse brown skirt was not long enough to conceal her wonderfully shaped ankles.  Sun and wind had done little more than slightly tan her clear complexion.  She had somehow the appearance of a girl of some other nation.  There was something stronger, more forceful, more brilliant about her, than her position seemed to warrant.

“There is a question, miss,” she said at last, abruptly, “I should like to ask you.  I should have asked you when you first came, if I had been in when you came to look at the rooms.”

“What is it?” Jeanne asked quietly.

“I’ve a good eye for faces,” Kate said, “and I seldom forget one.  Weren’t you the young lady who was staying up at the Red Hall a few weeks ago?”

Jeanne nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “I was staying there.  It was because I liked the place so much, and because I was so much happier here than in London, that I came back.”

There was a moment’s silence.  Jeanne looked up and found Kate’s magnificent eyes fixed steadfastly upon her face.

“Is it for no other reason, miss,” she asked, “that you have come back?”

“For none other in the world,” Jeanne answered.  “I was unhappy in London, and I wanted to get somewhere where I should be quite unknown.  That is why I came here.”

“You didn’t come back,” Kate asked, “to see more of Mr. De la Borne, then?”

The simple directness of the question seemed to rob it of its impertinence.  Jeanne laughed goodhumouredly.

“I can assure you that I did not,” she answered.  “To tell you the truth, and I hope that you will be kind and remember that I do not wish any one to know this, the reason why I only go out so early in the morning or late at night is because I do not wish to see any one from the Red Hall.  I do not wish them to know that I am here.”