"My dear, you will be roasted! Come and sit in the shade here, in my chair."
"Oh! then I should be suffocated. No, I'll try the cliffs. What is the time? Just time for a quiet stroll. Good-by."
"Stop, my dear Violet. Pray don't go without your sunshade! You will be burned up!"
"Right. I'd forgotten that stupid old thing. Where is it? Let me see—where did I throw it?"
And she stood in the middle of the room, swinging her hat to and fro, and fanning herself.
"Is that it under the piano?" said Mrs. Mildmay, pointing to the sunshade where it lay, ignominiously entangled with the legs of the instrument.
"Yes, that is it. What dear, sharp eyes you have, auntie. Come along, sunshade! It's rather hard that you, being so much the weaker, should be burned to save me."
And with another happy nod and smile away she floated again, her long, diaphanous skirt whisking a current of cool air through the room and just escaping the overturning of a table of bric-a-brac by an inch.
The cliffs to which Miss Mildmay bent her steps were within five minutes' walk of the lawn, and were one of the young lady's favorite promenades.
From them, looking seaward, she could feast her eyes upon the ocean, ever restless and sportful, like herself; turning landward there jutted far a fair stretch of well-wooded scenery, with Mildmay House in the foreground, and the sparkling Tivor, where it ran in a semicircle toward the sea as a belt to inclose the whole.