The Coming Wave by Oliver Optic

Miss Sarah Liverage had been three days at the Cliff House before the mystery of her coming appeared to promise a solution. The landlord was sure she had come for something, for all her speech and all her actions indicated this. She had not visited the shore for recreation, and was not idling away a vacation. One day she commenced a conversation with Mr. Bennington, and the next with Leopold; and, though she evidently desired to make some important revelation, or ask some startling question, she always failed to carry out her purpose. She was nervous and excitable; and on the second day of her stay at the hotel, the chambermaid discovered her in her room, on her knees before the fireplace, apparently investigating the course of the flue; but when the girl asked her what she was doing, she answered that she was looking for her shawl-pin, which she had dropped.

The weather was rather chilly, and the wind blew fresh and stormy on the bay, so that Leopold seldom went out in the new boat, but did a man's work about the hotel; for as the season advanced the "help" was reduced. Miss Liverage, for some reason, seemed to be very desirous of cultivating his acquaintance, and she talked with him much more than with his father. On the second day of her stay she offered him a dollar, when he brought her a pitcher of water to drink in the parlor, which the young man was too proud to accept. The guest talked to him for half an hour; and he noticed that she did not drink any of the water he had brought. On the strength of this and other similar incidents, Leopold declared that she was a very strange woman. She sent for him, or procured his attendance by less direct means, as though she had something to say; but she did not say it. She asked a multitude of questions in regard to some of the localities in the vicinity, but she did not connect her business at Rockhaven with any of them.