''Tis too bad to be taken up in that way,' he said. 'There's always a bit of chaff going on; but if it were all taken for gospel truth I don't know where we should be. I give you my word of honour that I don't think he ever looked twice at her; anyhow, he didn't hesitate between you; nor could he, for, of course, you know you're a fifty times prettier woman.'
Kate answered the flattery with a delightful smile, and Montgomery thought that he had convinced her. But the young man was deceived by appearances. He had succeeded more in turning the current of her thoughts than in persuading her.
'You seem to think very lightly of such things,' she said, raising her brown eyes with a look that melted her face to a heavenly softness.
Montgomery did not understand, and she was forced to explain. This was difficult to do, but, after a slight hesitation, she said:
'Then you really do believe that Miss Leslie and Mr. Bret are lovers?'
'Oh, I really don't know,' he said hastily, for he saw himself drawn into a fresh complication; 'I never pry into other people's affairs. They seem to like each other, that's all.'
It was now Kate's turn to see that indiscreet questions might lead to the quarrels she was most anxious to avoid, and they walked along the breezy common in silence, seeing the sea below them, and far away the weedy waste of stone filled with the white wings of gulls, touched here and there with the black backs of the shrimp-fishers.
'How strange it is that the sea should go and come like that! I'd never seen it as it is now till the day before yesterday, and Dick was so amused, for I thought it was going to dry up. The morning after our arrival here we sat down by the bathing-boxes on the beach and listened to the waves. They roared along the shore. It's very wonderful. Don't you think so?'
'Yes, indeed I do. When I was here before, I spent one whole morning listening to the waves, and their surging suggested a waltz to me. This is the way it went,' and leaning on the rough paling that guarded the precipitous edge, Montgomery sang his unpublished composition. 'I never got any further,' he said, stopping short in the middle of the second part; 'I somehow lost the character of the thing; but I like the opening.'
'Oh, so do I. I wonder how you can think of such tunes. How clever you must be!'