Then a deep, deep stillness crept over the solitary place--a stillness strangely deeper than that even of the daytime.

The wail of the sea-gulls died away, and the few busy cries of the farm-yard ceased; the only sound that broke the silence was a muffled, hollow boom which came up the ravine from the sea.
Before nine o'clock Tardif and his mother had gone up-stairs to their rooms in the thatch; and I lay wearied but sleepless in my bed, listening to these dull, faint, ceaseless murmurs, as a child listens to the sound of the sea in a shell.

Was it possible that it was I, myself, the Olivia who had been so loved and cherished in her girlhood, and so hated and tortured in later years, who was come to live under a fisherman's roof, in an island, the name of which I barely knew four days ago?
I fell asleep at last, yet I awoke early; but not so early that the other inmates of the cottage were not up, and about their day's work.

It was my wish to wait upon myself, and so diminish the cost of living with these secluded people; but I found it was not to be so; Tardif waited upon me assiduously, as well as his deaf mother.

The old woman would not suffer me to do any work in my own room, but put me quietly upon one side when I began to make my bed.