“Nonsense, nonsense, Mrs Sarson,” cried Chris impatiently.
“No, sir, it is not nonsense, and I don’t a bit mind you being impatient with me, for it’s quite natural; but do let me ask Doctor Asher to call in.”
“No, no, no,” cried Chris, with increasing loudness and emphasis. “And now, pray, go and leave me to myself.”
The landlady sighed, and slowly left the room.
“This woman will send me crazy,” muttered Chris. “What shall I do? Go right away for a long trip, and try and forget it all.” And he went and leaned against the side of the window and looked out over the sea, thinking only of Claude seated alone with Glyddyr, listening to his words, and that, as the stone yields before the constant dropping, so would she at last.
“I must see, and will see her, and get her promise,” he said at last excitedly; and, taking his hat, he strode out of the cottage and went right out up the east glen with the intention of getting away round over the high ground by the cliffs, and continuing under the shelter of the night to go up to the Fort by the back, so as to get within the garden, and perhaps manage to call either Claude’s or Mary’s attention by creeping round to the drawing-room window.
It was a miserable, clandestine proceeding, and he felt all the nervous trepidation of a boy on his way to rob an orchard. Two or three times over he hesitated and turned to go back; but the next moment the sweet, pleading face of Claude seemed to appear before him, and that of Glyddyr mocking and triumphant.
“I can’t help it,” he cried. “I must, I will see her to-night, if it’s only for a minute.”
It was not so easy a task as he had told himself; and, as he descended the cliff towards where, on a separate little eminence cut off from the main cliff by a deep rift, the Fort stood, he noted for the first time that it was bathed in the soft yellow moonlight which rose above the sea.
This checked him for the moment, till it occurred to him that though the moon shone brightly in parts, there were plenty of spots where he could approach the place in the deep shadows; and taking advantage of the clumps of furze, and the ragged, stunted pines, which had obtained a foothold for their precarious existence here and there, he crept on and on, selecting the narrow little gully for his course, down which gurgled the tiny spring which supplied the moat with water.