"Poor old fellow," he thought. "We'll take him with us, and look after him together. Give him his painting tools, and he'll be happy enough!"
He walked along the beach and on to the cliffs and suddenly he came upon Leslie. She was sitting in a cleft of the rocks, a book on her lap, but it was lying face downward, and she was looking out to sea. He stole behind her, and bent down and kissed her. She started, but not violently, and the blood rushed to her face.
"Yorke!" was all she said, but all her love, her joy on his return breathed in the single word.
He took both her hands, and sat down beside her.
"I startled you, dearest!" he said.
How lovely she looked! How sweet, and, ah, how pure and good! Not Eleanor herself could look more refined, more spirituelle than this love of his—his Leslie.
"No!" she said, with a faint smile, and a little shyness in her voice and eyes. "I ought to have been startled, but I was not. Perhaps it was because I was thinking of you. When did you come back?"
"A few minutes ago, dearest," he said. "Has it seemed long to you? I thought, perhaps, that you would have forgotten me."
She smiled at him.