Damaris went slowly from the cliffs through the moonlight; her heart was heavy. She had had a great temptation, a great joy, a great disillusion, and a great grief, each following close on the heels of the other in the short space of a few hours.

She came back to her poor little isle with something of that remorse, that dejection, that sense of all the golden fruits being but ashes at the core, with which the great ones of earth, after reaching the highest heights of power or of fame, will come back to their lowly village birthplace and think with a sigh, 'Could I but be as once I was!'

The night seemed far severed from the day which had heralded it as if by long years: never more could she rise in the daybreak quite the same child who had leaped to the lattice, and laughed at the sunrise on the sea, that morning.

She did not reason on the change in her, nor understand it, but she felt it.

When the little velvet-hided calf has been branded in the stock-yard with the cruel iron, never more (though turned loose again) will it frolic the same in the prairie grass unwitting of pain or ill.

She took her way slowly over the head of the cliff across the breadth of pasture where a few days before she had led Loswa. There was a dusky crouching figure waiting in the shadow of the orange-boughs; it was that of old Catherine the servant, who sprang towards her and gripped her arm with both hands.

'He is come home!' she said in a loud, terrified whisper.

'My grandfather!'

Bold though she was by nature, her lips and cheeks grow cold and her heart stood still.

'Who else!' cried the old woman roughly. 'For who else would I keep out of my bed at such an hour to watch for you? Where have you been all the while?'

'I have been with the lady.'

Her voice sounded very dull and hopeless; it melted the heart of the peasant who loved her.

'Well, well, you have had your will and your vanity, and have paid for them both!' she said, less harshly. 'Poor little fool! It is your mother's light blood working in you, I suppose; you're not to blame. They are to blame who bred you. I have watched for you ever since I gave him his supper. He asked where you were. I said you were asleep. He has had a good deal of brandy. If you get in by the scullery door, and take your shoes off, and go softly up the stairs, he will not hear, and nobody knows you have been away save Raphael and myself. That is why I waited outside, to stop and tell you that you might creep in unseen.'

Damaris stooped her tall head and kissed the woman's withered cheek:

'That was like you, dear Catherine!'

'More fool I, perhaps. I will punish you come morning, never fear. But I should be loath for you to see BÉrarde to-night. Get in.'

Seeing that Damaris did not move, she pushed her by the shoulder.

But the words which Othmar had spoken were echoing in the ear, and sounding at the conscience, of the girl, bearing a harvest which he had never dreamed of when he had uttered them. There was that in them which had aroused all the courage and exaggerated sentiment of her mind and character.

The instincts of heroism, always strong in her, and that instinct to martyrdom ever dear to anything of womanhood, rose in her with irresistible force.

'If Count Othmar ever heard that I did not tell, he would think it so mean and so false,' she pondered, while the eager grip of the woman's fingers closed on her and tried to pull her to the open side-entrance of the house.

She resisted.

'No, no; not so, not so; not in secret,' she muttered. 'I wish to see my grandfather. Let me pass.'

'Are you mad?' screamed Catherine, dragging her backward by her skirts. 'He is hot with brandy, I tell you; you know what brandy makes him; if he knows you have been off the island he will beat you. Has he not beaten you before, that you should doubt it?'

'I do not doubt,' said Damaris. 'But it is only just that he should be told——

'I owe him everything, you know,' she added, 'and I did wrong to go away from home in his absence.'

'Wrong! of course you did wrong. But you would listen to nobody, you were so taken up with those fine folks. Of course you did wrong, but since the harm is done, and it is of no use to cry over spilt milk and broken eggs, get you into your bed; your grandfather will never know anything. Raphael and I, be sure, shall not tell. Get in and hold your own counsel. In the morning it will all be as one.'

'No, it would not be fair,' said Damaris.

Her face was very pale, but the exaltation of a romantic devotion to honour had come upon her, and gave her a strength not her own. She passed the figure of Catherine in the entrance of the scullery, and walked with firm steps through the stone passages, between the crowded bales of oranges and lemons, straightway into the great kitchen, where Jean BÉrarde sat. The light from an oil lamp which swung from the rafters shone on his strong, harsh, brown features, his grizzled eyebrows, his white beard; the broad-leaved hat he had drawn over his face threw a dark gloom over the upper part of his features, and added to the natural hardness and fierceness of their expression. He had been running smuggled brandies successfully in his brig, a sport very dear to him, though prudence made him but seldom indulge in it; he had been drinking a good deal, and though not wholly drunk his temper was in readiness for any outbreak, like flax soaked in petroleum. He looked up from under his heavy brows at Damaris as she entered; the light and shadows were wavering before his sight, but he recognised her.

'The woman said you were a-bed,' he muttered with a great oath. 'What do you mean—up at this time of night?'

The exaggerated scruples and the overwrought exaltation of the child made her brave to answer him. She came up quite close to him and looked at him with shining, steady eyes:

'I am only now come home,' she said in a low voice. 'I have done wrong; I have been out all day.'

Jean BÉrarde rose to his feet unsteadily, and towered above her, a rude, savage, terrible figure; his breath, hot as the fumes of burning spirit, scorched her cheek.

'Out!' he echoed. 'Out!—without my leave? Out where?'

She looked at him without flinching. Only she was very pale.

'They came and asked me—the ladies and gentlemen—and I wished so much to go. I have never seen at all how those people live, and when I got there the hours went on, and I could not get back until he, Count Othmar, was kind enough to bring me home in his own boat, and he rowed himself all the way; and he said that it would not be right for me to hide such a thing from you, because, though I have done no harm, yet I have disobeyed you——'

She paused, having made her confession; she breathed very quickly and faintly; her eyes looked up at him with an unspoken prayer for pardon.

In answer, he lifted his arm and struck her to the ground.