"Well, I don't mind," said Miss Sheckleton. "Come, Margaret, dear," and these latter words she repeated in private exhortation, and then aloud she added—"We have grown so much into the habit of shutting ourselves up in our convent grounds, that we feel like a pair of runaway nuns whenever we pass the walls; however, I must see the island."
The twenty steps toward the sea came to be a hundred or more, and at last brought them close under the rude rocks that form the little pier; in that place, the party stopped, and saw the island rising in the distant sheen, white and filmy; a phantom island, with now and then a gleam of silvery spray, from the swell which was unfelt within the estuary, shooting suddenly across its points of shadow.
"Oh! how beautiful!" exclaimed Miss Fanshawe, and Cleve felt strangely elated in her applause. They were all silent, and Miss Sheckleton, still gazing on the distant cliffs, walked on a little, and a little more, and paused.
"How beautiful!" echoed Cleve, in tones as low, but very different. "Yes, how beautiful—how fatally beautiful; how beloved, and yet how cold. Cold, mysterious, wild as the sea; beautiful, adored and cruel. How could you speak as you did to-day? What have I done, or said, or thought, if you could read my thoughts? I tell you, ever since I saw you in Cardyllian church I've thought only of you; you haunt my steps; you inspire my hopes. I adore you, Margaret."
She was looking on him with parted lips, and something like fear in her large eyes, and how beautiful her features were in the brilliant moonlight.
"Yes, I adore you; I don't know what fate or fiend rules these things; but to-day it seemed to me that you hated me, and yet I adore you; do you hate me?"
"How wildly you talk; you can't love me; you don't know me," said this odd girl.
"I don't know you, and yet I love you; you don't know me, and yet I think you hate me. You talk of love as if it were a creation of reason and calculation. You don't know it, or you could not speak so; antipathies perhaps you do not experience; is there no caprice in them? I love you in defiance of calculation, and of reason, and of hope itself. I can no more help loving you than the light and air without which I should die. You're not going; you're not so cruel; it may be the last time you shall ever hear me speak. You won't believe me; no, not a word I say, although it's all as true as that this light shines from heaven. You'd believe one of your boatmen relating any nonsense he pleases about people and places here. You'll believe worse fellows, I dare say, speaking of higher and dearer things, perhaps—I can't tell; but me, on this, upon which I tell you, all depends for me, you won't believe. I never loved any mortal before. I did not know what it was, and now here I stand, telling you my bitter story, telling it to the sea, and the rocks, and the air, with as good a chance of a hearing. I read it in your manner and your words to-day. I felt it intuitively. You don't care for me; you can't like me; I see it in your looks. And now, will you tell me; for God's sake, Margaret, do tell me—is there not some one—you do like? I know there is."
"That's quite untrue—I mean there is nothing of the kind," said this young lady, looking very pale, with great flashing eyes; "and one word more of this kind to-night you are not to say to me. Cousin Anne," she called, "come, I'm going back."
"We are so much obliged to you, Mr. Verney," said Miss Sheckleton, returning; "we should never have thought of coming down here, to look for this charming view. Come, Margaret, darling, your papa may want me."