Sybil had much cause for thought, and was somewhat disposed to linger on the way. The ample means enjoyed by her parents on the one hand, with the general seclusion of their lives on the other, and their studied avoidance of society when in England, had now given the girl much reason for reflection.
Her papa's mysterious absence too, and her mamma's nervous anxiety about American letters, were not without singularity; and why had both so sedulously abstained from all introduction to the family of the Trecarrels, who were greatly esteemed in the neighbourhood, and who were undoubtedly people of the best style? By the system of which this seemed merely a portion, she was even now debarred from having properly presented to her this Mr. Audley Trevelyan, who seemed so well disposed to admire—perhaps, to love her.
"We have made but few acquaintances and, of course, still fewer friends at Porthellick," said Sybil, half aloud; "now why is it thus—to have means in plenty and so few to love us? What can be the reason? Mamma has some secret; but what can that secret be? Poor mamma—she looks so sweet always, and yet so sad at times!"
She would write to Denzil, she thought, on the subject of these mysteries; but Denzil was yet at sea, and it would be long, long, before she might receive his answer; and, then, there would be an awkwardness in their parents' reading, as they would certainly wish to do, his letters and perceiving the doubts she had suggested—the secrets she wished to probe. Perhaps when her papa, whose especial pet she wras, returned, she might venture to give some hints, to make some inquiries; and as she saw the white sails of the shipping and the smoke of many a passing steamer, she lifted her eyes to heaven with an unuttered prayer in her heart, that she might soon again hear his voice and cast herself into his arms.
By one of those lanes peculiar to Cornwall, where the old road is sunk so deep in the ground and the bordering walls are so high that the surrounding scenery is sometimes hidden, lanes where in summer the elms cast their leafy shadows, and the fragrant wild rose and honeysuckle mingle with the long tangles of the bramble, Sybil reached the shore and descended to the very margin of the sea.
It was one of those evenings which, even in the last days of autumn, come to the rocky and rugged duchy, when the atmosphere is so mild and balmy that one might think it was in the early weeks of spring, when the grey cliffs and purple moorland glisten in the yellow rays as the sunlight falls softly between the flying clouds, on land and sea; and the sparkling stream, that rolls from rock to rock on its passage to the shore, makes music in its plash as it falls from the cascade into the pool below, where the brown trout lurks in safety and unseen; and Sybil, as she wandered on, felt, she knew not why, an emotion of calm and contentment growing in her heart.
But in its serenity and beauty the evening was deceptive, and old fishermen on the heights, and other weather-beaten salts who lingered, telescope in hand, on many a rude pier that jutted into the Bristol Channel, when looking seaward detected that which the landsman saw not—the tokens of a coming storm; for seamen have strange instincts peculiarly their own, and can read the sky like the pages of a mighty book.
Across the sea the sun, now setting, poured a steady stream of golden radiance, like a broad and glittering pathway from the far horizon to the very shore, by the margin of which Sybil was now lingering; and it tinted with warm light the flinty brow of many a storm-beaten headland, and those fantastic piles of grey granite which cap the hills in Cornwall, and are there called carns.
Seated on a fragment of rock, lulled by the regular and monotonous rolling of the surge, Sybil was immersed in thoughts of her absent father and brother, each now traversing the same sea, and yet so far apart upon its waters; she thought of Audley Trevelyan. Should she ever meet him in society as she wished to do? A little time and it might be too late, for Rose Trecarrel was so lovely, and already seemed to consider him as her own property; for it was by her side he sat in church, where they used the same books, and it was she that he usually shawled or cloaked first for the carriage; so if they were not already engaged, they might very soon be so.
Amid this reverie she was startled by a distant voice holloing, and apparently to her. She looked up, and on the summit of a cliff that overhung the shore, some two hundred feet or so above where she was seated, a man was gesticulating violently and beckoning to her.