As she had said, not a doubt of Yorke's truth and honor cast a shadow over her happiness. If he said that it was necessary that they should be married at once and secretly, it must be so—it should be so! He was her lover, her master, her king. She had given herself to him absolutely; she trusted him because she could not help herself.
She had almost reached the point, and would have gone on, but she remembered that the tide was coming in, and that there would not be time to get round before the sea rose above the narrow ledge of rock at the foot of the cliffs, and she was turning back when she caught sight of something dark above a rock at the very foot of the point.
For a moment she thought it was a bird, then she saw that it was a hat—a woman's hat. Someone was sitting there. In an instant it struck her that it might be a stranger, unacquainted with the conformation of the coast line, and that if she sat there for a few minutes longer she would be unable to get back or to turn the point.
Leslie looked at the tide, and was startled to find that it had run up quicker than she had thought. There would be barely time to reach the woman behind the rock and warn her. She ran forward as quickly as she could and shouted at the top of her voice, but the voice of the incoming waves beating against the rocks drowned hers.
She looked round, hoping to see a boat or a fisherman, but no one was in sight; and she and the unknown, sitting there in all unconsciousness of her peril, were alone in the grim place.
Most women would have paused and thought of her own safety, but Leslie and selfishness had not yet made acquaintance, and she hurried on, running where there was a bare bit of sand, and scrambling over the rocks that lay in her path. At last she reached the one behind which the woman she had come to warn was sitting, and stood before her breathlessly.
"Oh, quick! Quick!" she cried pantingly. Then she stopped, and recoiled a little. It was a girl, seated in an attitude of weariness and lassitude, her elbows on her knees, her head bowed. Even in this first moment Leslie noted the grace and sorrowful abandon of the figure; but it was the uplifted face that made her recoil, for it was that of the woman she had seen below St. Martin's Tower—it was the woman who had sung the disreputable music-hall ditty.
There was no reckless gaiety in the face now, but a misery and despair so eloquent that even as she recoiled, Leslie's heart ached with pity for her.
The dark eyes looked at Leslie vacantly for a moment, then flashed with sudden anger.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" she asked, half sullenly, half defiantly.