AUNT MARIA Six months or so had gone by and summer reigned royally at Eastwich, for thus was the parish named of which the Reverend Septimus Walrond had spiritual charge.

The heath was a blaze of gold, the cut hay smelt sweetly in the fields, the sea sparkled like one vast sapphire, the larks beneath the sun and the nightingales beneath the moon sang their hearts out on Gunter's Hill, and all the land was full of life and sound and perfume.
On one particularly beautiful evening, after partaking of a meal called "high tea," Barbara, quite strong again now and blooming like the wild rose upon her breast, set out alone upon a walk.

Her errand was to the cottage of that very fisherman whose child her father had baptised on the night when her life trembled in the balance.

Having accomplished this she turned homewards, lost in reverie, events having happened at the Rectory which gave her cause for thought.

When she had gone a little way some instinct led her to look up.