They were both seated on low folding-chairs out on the open moorland, only a few yards away from the edge of the rugged line of cliffs against which, many hundreds of feet below, the sea was breaking with a low monotonous murmur. Close behind them, on a level stretch of springy turf, a roughly improvised table, covered with a cloth of dazzling whiteness, was laden with deep bowls of lobster salad, pâtes de foie gras, chickens, truffled turkeys, piles of hothouse fruit, and many other delicacies peculiarly appreciated at al fresco symposia; and, a little further away still, under the shade of a huge yellow gorse bush, were several ice-pails, in which were reposing many rows of gold-foiled bottles. The warm sun was just sufficiently tempered by a mild heather-scented breeze, and though it flashed gayly upon the glass and silver, and danced across the bosom of the blue water below, its heat was more pleasant than oppressive. The two women who sat there looked delightfully cool. Helen Thurwell especially, in her white holland gown, with a great bunch of heather stuck in her belt, and a faint healthy glow in her cheeks, looked as only an English country girl of good birth can look—the very personification of dainty freshness.
"There go the guns again!" she exclaimed. "Listen to the echoes. They can't be far away now."
There was a little murmur of satisfaction. Every allowance is to be made for such a keen sportsman as Mr. Thurwell on the glorious twelfth, but the time fixed for the rendezvous had been exceeded by more than an hour.
"I have reached the limit of my endurance!" Rachel Kynaston declared, getting up from her seat. "I must either lunch or faint! As a matter of choice, I prefer the former."
"They will be here directly, miss," Groves remarked, as he completed the finishing touches which he had been putting to the table, and stepped back a little to view the effect. So far as he was concerned they might come any time now. For once his subordinates had not failed him. Nothing had been forgotten; and, on the whole, he felt that he had reason to be proud of his handiwork.
He glanced away inland again, shading his eyes with his hand.
"They'll be coming round the Black Copse in five minutes," he said, half to himself. "James, get the other chairs out of the wagon."
Rachel Kynaston was still standing up looking around her. Suddenly her eyes fell upon a quaintly built cottage, perched upon the edge of the cliff about a mile away.
"I meant to ask you before, Helen," she exclaimed. "Who lives in that extraordinary-looking building—Falcon's Nest, I think you call it?"
She moved her parasol in its direction, and looked at it curiously. A strange-looking abode it certainly was; built of yellow stone, with a background of stunted fir trees which stretched half way down the cliff side.