“Mary, darling,” said Claude affectionately, “if you knew how you hurt me, you would cease these mocking allusions to your affliction.”
“Then I will not hurt you any more, pet. But I am such a sight.”
“No, you are not. You have, when in repose, the sweetest, cleverest face I ever saw.”
“Let’s be in repose, then.”
“And you know you are brilliant in intellect, where I am stupid.”
“Oh! if I could be as stupid!”
“And you have the sweetest voice possible. See what gifts these are.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so, Claudie, but I don’t care for them a bit—not a millionth part as much as having your love. There, don’t let’s talk nonsense. Come along.”
She hurried her companion over a bridge and towards a path roughly made beside the babbling stream which supplied the moat at the Fort, and then in and out among the rocks, and beneath the pensile birches which shed a dappled shade over the path, while every here and there in gardens great clumps of fuchsias and hydrangeas showed the moist warmth of the sheltered nook.
They walked quickly, Claude urged on by her companion, who climbed the steep path with the agility of a goat, till they reached a fall, where the water came tumbling over the hoary, weather-stained rocks, and the path forked, one track going over the stream behind the fall, and the other becoming a rough stairway right up the side of the glen.