With two long strides, he seized the book and opened it.
"I knew you would be very much bored," said Violet. "I told you so before you came."
"And I assure you that you were wrong, which you are. I was never further from being bored in my life. That's a fine view. I climbed that on the coldest day in winter and had to have my fingers thawed in the shed at the top."
"And you learned cliff climbing in Switzerland, of course?" said Violet, naïvely. "Do you know, you frightened me so this morning? I was afraid you would fall over and be killed?"
Leicester's eyes—they were dark and deep and somewhat stern for so young a man—brightened.
"Should you have been so sorry?" he asked.
"Of course. How stupid a question!" laughed Violet, wickedly. "Cannot you surmise the consequences? I might have been accused of throwing you over, tried and condemned."
"But the motive," said Leicester, entering into the jest. "What motive could they have found?"
"Oh," said Violet, "people are always ready to find motives for other people; they would have said I resented your appearance as an interruption to a train of poetic thoughts; in fact, they would have been sure to find a motive."
"That is a pretty plain hint that I am to avoid that favorite walk of yours for the future, and beware how I interrupt your cliff reveries."