Monica had taken off her heavily-plumed hat, and the golden sunshine glowed about her fair head in a sort of mist of liquid brightness. Her face wore a dreamy, softened look, pathetically sad and sweet. Her lustrous dark eyes were full of feeling. It seemed as if she were breathing out her soul in the sweet, low strains of music that sounded in the air.
Randolph gazed for one long minute, and then silently withdrew; it seemed a kind of sacrilege to take her unawares like that, when she was unconscious of their presence.
“Saint Cecilia!” he murmured softly, as he descended the stairs once again. “Monica, my Monica! will you ever be mine in reality? Will you ever learn to love me?”
Monica’s face still wore its softened dreamy look as she joined Randolph at the close of the service. Music exercised a strange power over her, raising her for a time above the level of the region in which she moved at other times. She looked pale and a little tired, as if the strain of the week of anxiety about Arthur had not yet quite passed off. As they reached the top of the down and turned the angle of the cliff, the wind, which had been gradually rising all day and now blew half a gale, struck them with all its force, and Monica staggered a little beneath its sudden fury.
“Take my arm, Lady Monica,” said Randolph. “This is too much for you.”
“Thank you,” she answered, gently; and a sudden thrill ran through Randolph’s frame as he felt the clinging pressure of her hand upon his arm, and was conscious that she was grateful for the strong support against the fury of the elements.
“It will be a dreadful night at sea,” said the girl presently, when a lull in the wind made speech more easy. “Look at the waves now? Are they not magnificent?”
The sea was looking very wild and grand; Randolph halted a moment beneath the shelter of a projecting crag, and gazed at the tempest-tossed ocean beneath.
“You like a storm at sea, Lady Monica?”
She looked at him with a sort of horror in her eyes.