He turned up into the stiff slope running away to the cliff top, and in a short time was where he could look down on the Fort and get glimpses of the garden, where, to his infinite rage and pain, he soon after caught the glint of a white dress, then of one of the palest blue, and directly after there was a third party to form a trio, which sauntered up and down till he could bear it no longer, and walked right on.
“It’s of no use,” he said to himself; “I must see Claude and ask her what it all means. I can’t go on like this, seeing that man go to and fro as if he were accepted. It is too hard to be borne.”
He threw himself down at the top of the cliff, and lay gazing out to sea as he tried to settle his next proceedings. One thing was certain; he must see Claude, and come to a thorough understanding about their future. Then perhaps he could wait.
But how was he to obtain an interview?
Mary Dillon.
No; she had refused point blank to act against her uncle’s wishes, though she sympathised with both of them.
Claude would not meet him, nor yet correspond, but had told him to wait.
“And who can wait at a time like this?” he cried. “If she only would not be quite so obedient,” he continued, though all the time he knew in his heart that he loved her the more for her fulfilment of her fathers commands.
No; it was of no use to think that she would consent to meet him by appointment, and there was no one person whom he cared to trust.
“It is so degrading,” he said, “to have to place yourself and her at the mercy of some common, vindictive kind of creature, who has to be paid.”