He backed at the sound of her voice, and she had an instant of sickening fear, for there was a drop of twenty feet behind him on the shingle. But he must have seen her look, for he stopped himself on the brink, and stood there doggedly.
"Don't stand there!" she said quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
He lowered his head, and looked at her from under drawn brows. "Yes, you are," he said gruffly. "You're going to beat me with that stick."
The shrewdness of this surmise struck her as not without humour. She smiled, and, turning, flung the stick straight down to the path below. "Now!" she said.
He came forward, not very willingly, and stood within a couple of yards of her, still looking as if he expected some sort of chastisement.
She faced him, and the last of her fear departed. Though he was so terribly deformed that he looked like some dreadful beast reared on its hind legs there was that about the face, sullen though it was, that stirred her deepest feelings.
She did her best to conceal the fact, however. "Tell me why you threw those stones!" she said.
"Because I wanted to hit you," he returned with disconcerting promptitude.
She looked at him steadily. "How very unkind of you!" she said.
His eyes gleamed with a smouldering resentment. "No, it wasn't. I didn't want you there. Dicky is coming soon, and he likes it best when there is no one there."