“At least he shall not think that I can stolidly sleep after what has occurred,” she thought, and she turned up her light, opened her window, and sat down by it again.  Whoever the unseasonable rambler might be, he appeared to recognize the gleam from her window, for he walked hastily down the beach and disappeared.  After a time she darkened her room again and waited in vain for his return.  “If it were he, he shuns even the slightest recognition,” she thought despairingly; and the early dawn was not far distant when she fell into an unquiet sleep.

For the next few days Miss Van Tyne was a puzzle to all except Mrs. Alston.  She was quite unlike the girl she had formerly been, and she made no effort to disguise the fact.  In the place of her old exuberance of life and spirits, there was lassitude and great depression.  The rich color ebbed steadily from her face, and dark lines under her eyes betokened sleepless nights.  She saw the many curious glances in her direction, but apparently did not care what was thought or surmised.  Were it not that her manner to Ackland was so misleading, the tendency to couple their names together would have been far more general.  She neither sought nor shunned his society; in fact, she treated him as she did the other gentlemen of her acquaintance.  She took him at his word.  He had said he would forgive her on condition that she would not speak of what he was pleased to term that “little episode,” and she never referred to it.

Her aunt was as much at fault as the others, and one day querulously complained to Mrs. Alston that she was growing anxious about Eva.  “At first I thought she was disappointed over the indifference of that icy cousin of yours; but she does not appear to care a straw for him.  When I mention his name she speaks of him in a natural, grateful way, then her thoughts appear to wander off to some matter that is troubling her.  I can’t find out whether she is ill or whether she has heard some bad news of which she will not speak.  She never gave me or any one that I know of much of her confidence.”

Mrs. Alston listened but made no comments.  She was sure she was right in regard to Miss Van Tyne’s trouble, but her cousin mystified her.  Ackland had become perfectly inscrutable.  As far as she could judge by any word or act of his he had simply lost his interest in Miss Van Tyne, and that was all that could be said; and yet a fine instinct tormented Mrs. Alston with the doubt that this was not true, and that the young girl was the subject of a sedulously concealed scrutiny.  Was he watching for his friend or for his own sake, or was he, in a spirit of retaliation, enjoying the suffering of one who had made others suffer?  His reserve was so great that she could not pierce it, and his caution baffled even her vigilance.  But she waited patiently, assured that the little drama must soon pass into a more significant phase.