Beatrice | Page 4

weeds
which clung about their sides began to lift as the water took their
weight, till at last the delicate pattern floated out and lay like a woman's
hair upon the green depth of sea. Meanwhile a mist was growing dense
and soft upon the quiet waters. It was not blown up from the west, it
simply grew like the twilight, making the silence yet more silent and
blotting away the outlines of the land. Beatrice gave up studying the
seaweed and watched the gathering of these fleecy hosts.
"What a curious evening," she said aloud to herself, speaking in a low
full voice. "I have not seen one like it since mother died, and that is
seven years ago. I've grown since then, grown every way," and she
laughed somewhat sadly, and looked at her own reflection in the quiet
water.

She could not have looked at anything more charming, for it would
have been hard to find a girl of nobler mien than Beatrice Granger as
on this her twenty-second birthday, she stood and gazed into that misty
sea.
Of rather more than middle height, and modelled like a statue, strength
and health seemed to radiate from her form. But it was her face with the
stamp of intellect and power shadowing its woman's loveliness that
must have made her remarkable among women even more beautiful
than herself. There are many girls who have rich brown hair, like some
autumn leaf here and there just yellowing into gold, girls whose deep
grey eyes can grow tender as a dove's, or flash like the stirred waters of
a northern sea, and whose bloom can bear comparison with the wilding
rose. But few can show a face like that which upon this day first
dawned on Geoffrey Bingham to his sorrow and his hope. It was strong
and pure and sweet as the keen sea breath, and looking on it one must
know that beneath this fair cloak lay a wit as fair. And yet it was all
womanly; here was not the hard sexless stamp of the "cultured" female.
She who owned it was capable of many things. She could love and she
could suffer, and if need be, she could dare or die. It was to be read
upon that lovely brow and face, and in the depths of those grey
eyes--that is, by those to whom the book of character is open, and who
wish to study it.
But Beatrice was not thinking of her loveliness as she gazed into the
water. She knew that she was beautiful of course; her beauty was too
obvious to be overlooked, and besides it had been brought home to her
in several more or less disagreeable ways.
"Seven years," she was thinking, "since the night of the 'death fog;' that
was what old Edward called it, and so it was. I was only so high then,"
and following her thoughts she touched herself upon the breast. "And I
was happy too in my own way. Why can't one always be fifteen, and
believe everything one is told?" and she sighed. "Seven years and
nothing done yet. Work, work, and nothing coming out of the work,
and everything fading away. I think that life is very dreary when one
has lost everything, and found nothing, and loves nobody. I wonder

what it will be like in another seven years."
She covered her eyes with her hands, and then taking them away, once
more looked at the water. Such light as struggled through the fog was
behind her, and the mist was thickening. At first she had some
difficulty in tracing her own likeness upon the glassy surface, but
gradually she marked its outline. It stretched away from her, and its
appearance was as though she herself were lying on her back in the
water wrapped about with the fleecy mist. "How curious it seems," she
thought; "what is it that reflection reminds me of with the white all
round it?"
Next instant she gave a little cry and turned sharply away. She knew
now. It recalled her mother as she had last seen her seven years ago.

CHAPTER II
AT THE BELL ROCK
A mile or more away from where Beatrice stood and saw visions, and
further up the coast-line, a second group of rocks, known from their
colour as the Red Rocks, or sometimes, for another reason, as the Bell
Rocks, juts out between half and three-quarters of a mile into the waters
of the Welsh Bay that lies behind Rumball Point. At low tide these
rocks are bare, so that a man may walk or wade to their extremity, but
when the flood is full only one or two of the very largest can from time
to time be seen