As she walked on beyond the house, the
sharp voice of Noel Vanstone reached her through the evening stillness.
"A fine girl, Lecount," she heard him say. "You know I am a judge of
that sort of thing--a fine girl!"
As those words were spoken, Captain Wragge looked round at his companion
in sudden surprise. Her hand was trembling violently on his arm, and her
lips were fast closed with an expression of speechless pain.
Slowly and in silence the two walked on until they reached the southern
limit of the houses, and entered on a little wilderness of shingle and
withered grass--the desolate end of Aldborough, the lonely beginning of
Slaughden.
It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward, was the gray majesty of the
sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into
the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle
water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive
circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass, closed the
view darkly on all that lay beyond. Westward, a lurid streak of sunset
glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened the fringing trees on the
far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little gleaming
water-pools to pools of blood.
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