She was standing on the highest point of the cliffs, her skirts blowing wildly around her tall, slim figure, and making strange havoc with her hair. Her face was turned seaward, but at the sound of his footsteps she turned quickly round. His heart beat fast for a moment, and then he remembered their parting earlier in the day.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you," he said coldly, raising his cap. "If I had had the least idea that you were here I would have taken the other path."
He was passing on, but as she made him no answer he glanced up at her face. Then all thought of going vanished. There were glistening tears in her dark eyes, and her lips were quivering.
"Forgive me, Miss Briscoe," he said, springing up to her side. "I was a clumsy idiot, but I was afraid that you would think that I had followed you. May I stay?"
She nodded, and turned her face away from him.
"Yes, stay," she answered softly; "stay and talk to me. Don't think me silly, but I was feeling sad—lonely, perhaps—and you have always spoken so kindly to me, that the change—it was a little too sudden."
"I was a brute," he whispered gently.
The change in her was wonderful. Her voice was soft, and, glancing up at her face, he could see that it was stained with tears. At that moment he felt that he would have given the world to have taken her into his arms and held her there, but he thrust the thought resolutely from him. Now was his opportunity to teach her to trust him. He would not even suffer his voice to take too tender a note.
"The fresh air is glorious after a day cooped up in a little study," he said lightly. "See the curlews there, flying round and round over the marshes. Tennyson's old home lies that way, you know. Do you wonder that this flat country, with its strange twilight effects, should have laid hold of him so powerfully?"
"It is strange and weird," she murmured thoughtfully.