Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over
the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in
the front of the procession. They were too amazed even to talk
about the strange happening. Isabella Spencer walked behind,
fiercely alone.

They all crowded into the little room of the house at the Cove,
and a solemn hush fell over it, broken only by the purr of the
sea-wind around it and the croon of the waves on the shore.
David Spencer gave his daughter away; but, when the ceremony was
concluded, Isabella was the first to take the girl in her arms.
She clasped her and kissed her, with tears streaming down her
pale face, all her nature melted in a mother's tenderness.

"Rachel! Rachel! My child, I hope and pray that you may be
happy," she said brokenly.

In the surge of the suddenly merry crowd of well-wishers around
the bride and groom, Isabella was pushed back into a shadowy
corner behind a heap of sails and ropes. Looking up, she found
herself crushed against David Spencer. For the first time in
twenty years the eyes of husband and wife met. A strange thrill
shot to Isabella's heart; she felt herself trembling.

"Isabella." It was David's voice in her ear--a voice full of
tenderness and pleading--the voice of the young wooer of her
girlhood--"Is it too late to ask you to forgive me? I've been a
stubborn fool--but there hasn't been an hour in all these years
that I haven't thought about you and our baby and longed for