He struck his forehead violently, and turned on the belt of sand with a fevered step. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder, as light as if a fairy's foot had lit upon it. He started, and, turning quickly round, beheld a female, enveloped in a hood and cloak, standing immediately behind him. The grace of her attitude, and the easy decision of her whole manner, assured him that she was not lowborn. His heart would have whispered the name that was enshrined in it, but the figure was not tall enough for hers. With an instinctive consciousness that he was in the presence of rank and beauty, to which, in this union, his independent spirit never refused to do homage, he doffed his cap, and addressed her with that native grace and dignity which characterized him:
"Lady, seek you aught in which I can aid you, that you have come to the seaside at this lonely hour?"
The moon shone full on his youthful features, which were shaded with locks of dark-flowing hair, parted across his high, pale forehead, and descending to his shoulder. She gazed for an instant, ere she replied, on his youthful face, on each lineament of which his bold character was written, while his ardent spirit spoke eloquently in every look. As he bent forward to catch her answer, with his bonnet in his hand, the cloud had vanished from his brow before the supposed presence of youth and beauty, and his deferential manner, so opposite to his former bearing, seemed to inspire her with confidence.
"My business is with you alone, Mark!" spoke, from beneath the shaded hood, the sweet, hesitating voice of Grace Fitzgerald, intuitively shrinking within the shadow of the cliff as she addressed him, just out of which, in the full light of the moon, the young fisherman himself stood.
"Lady Grace!" he exclaimed, with surprise, as her voice fell on his ear.
"Grace Fitzgerald, in body and spirit," said she, with her usual gayety.
"Can the highborn heiress of Earl Fitzgerald be served by one so humble?" he asked, in a tone slightly tinged with his former gloomy humour.
She seemed to be at a loss, for a moment, how to reply, scarcely knowing in what way to interpret his words. At length she said, advancing frankly towards him,
"I have not come to command your services, Mark, but to beg of you a favour; to ask you to execute a mission of delicacy, that can be intrusted to no one so well as yourself."
The frank and kind manner in which she spoke, the graceful propriety with which she overstepped the barrier of caste that separated them, sensibly affected him. It was the first time he had been so addressed by those above him in birth and station; the first time his services had not been demanded as a right by those who needed them.