“For a little, solitary walk. I wish to be alone, and I need more air and exercise than I can get here. The day is so beautiful, too, that I must improve it. There are so few fine days left at this season of the year,” she answered, as she drew on her gloves.
The colonel hesitated. He would rather have joined her; but her emphatic declaration that she wished a solitary walk, forbade him to force his unwelcome company upon her.
“Good-morning, uncle, dear; I shall return before lunch,” she said, as she left the house.
He watched her until she closed the front door behind her, and then he sighed and turned sadly to his study and shut himself in.
Gloria stood on the new portico above the new terrace and looked all over the renovated domain. Terrace below terrace, the ground fell from the house down to the park wall. Below that, encircling and enclosing the round of the end, arose the high, strong, gray sea-wall, shutting out the sight of the beach. It was so solid that the only egress in that direction was through the little, substantial stone boat-house that was built against it, and whose strong, iron-bound oak doors, both landward and seaward, were kept locked.
The only means of leaving the promontory was by water through the boat-house when the doors happened to be unlocked, or by land across the Rogue’s Neck when the tide was low.
“Really, now that the sea-wall is rebuilt the place is more like a penitentiary than ever,” said Gloria to herself, as she walked away from the house.
She wanted to get off the promontory, to take a longer walk than she could get within its limits, so she resolved to leave it by way of Rogue’s Neck and indulge in a ramble through the wintry woods on the main.
It was a really splendid day within about a week of the Christmas holidays. No snow had fallen yet, nor were the trees of that latitude stripped of the glorious autumnal regalia. Enough bright leaves had fallen to carpet the ground with a carpet more brilliant than the looms of Axminster or Brussels ever wove; but not enough to be missed from the royal robes of the forest. The glorious beauty of the autumn woods seen across the water, so attracted the young girl that she walked swiftly on towards Rogue’s Neck, never thinking whether it were high or low tide, only anxious to cross over and plunge into the depths of the grand forest. But when she came in sight of the Neck she found, to her disappointment, that the waves were dashing wildly over the whole length and breadth of it. It was high tide, and it would be six hours before the road would be passable again.
She turned away and—met David, the young fisherman, face to face!