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.