"These are the Miss Fennells," and she laid her fingers tight about my wrist.
I knew then that what I had felt in her eyes was true. It had been the touch of her hand.
CHAPTER XI
There was no need for us to announce ourselves. Dandy, who in two weeks has made himself known to the whole village, had finished with every preliminary. As the three figures came in sight round a sudden bend of the cliff path, we could see him trotting amiably by their side.
"And the invalid," said Bellwattle, in a whisper.
"And the invalid," I repeated, below my breath, but I know she did not hear me. I scarcely heard myself.
Another moment, in which my eyes were staring through the darkness at that dim third figure which I knew to be Clarissa, and then we had met. A nervous, hurried introduction took place. I caught no word of it then but the name—Clarissa's name. They said Miss Fawdry. That was all I heard. It was what I saw which occupied all my attention. Clarissa was dressed in black—just as I had imagined. A thick veil covered her face, falling to her shoulders, so that only a dim line of the features could be seen behind it. She bowed to us both in a quaint, timid, old-fashioned way. I shall never forget this my first meeting with Clarissa on that wild headland of those cliffs in Ireland. There will never die out of my ears the long, lonesome cries of the sea birds, the sound of the waters rolling to the rocks three hundred feet below, or those vivid stillnesses which fall upon you between the sound of the waves and the child-cries of the gulls away at sea. These things and that little black figure of a girl whom I had come some hundreds of miles to meet on the bare credit of a story—these I shall never forget.
It could not have been so pregnant a moment with Bellwattle. For if indeed she guesses—as well I know she must—there is bound to be many a mistake in her speculations. Doubtless, she thinks I have met Clarissa before; that, like some Knights of the Round Table, I am pursuing the lady to whom my heart is captive. Whatever she thinks, there will be romance to it. There is not that in a woman capable to conceive so prosaic a mission as mine. Thank God for it too. A woman will stitch the thread of love into the heel of an old sock while a man is impatiently waiting to put it on. For romance to a man is the winning and riding away—away into the heart of a sunset—but to a woman it is all horizon and beyond.
Whatever, then, she thought at our first meeting, there was no such confusion in her mind as was in mine; wherefore she went straight to the point, inquiring of Clarissa's health because, I suppose, it was the most natural thing to say.
"Are your eyes any better, Miss Fawdry?" she asked.