"Yes, a great many," he replied. "The strongest brain might be excused a sudden dizziness on the edge of such a precipice as this."
"Of course," assented Violet, laughing, but very quietly. "I am so much obliged; I thought only of my stupid sunshade."
"Ah!" he said, quietly, "I had forgotten that. Perhaps it has lodged on one of the jutting bushes; if it has, I may recover it for you," and he approached the edge.
Violet, who had not quite recovered from the shock which the sudden sense of her peril had produced, uttered a slight cry of warning and rebuke.
"Oh, please do not look over! It is of no consequence, not the slightest in the world."
The gentleman looked back at her alarmed face, then up at the blazing sun, and smiled significantly.
"It is of great consequence," he said, and before Violet could say another word to prevent him, he had gained the edge and was upon his knees, looking over.
"I can see it," he said, "and I think I can get it. The danger was not so great, after all; there are one or two ledges here which will bear a man's weight, I should think, and below them is your sunshade."
While he was speaking, he was cautiously, but fearlessly, lowering himself onto one of the ledges of which he had spoken, and Violet's horrified eyes lost first his legs, then his body, and last of all his good-looking face, as it disappeared below the edge.
Rooted to the spot with terror which she in vain struggled to suppress, Violet grew white as death and almost as cold.