“Cold am I, Estcourt? An iceberg, probably! I almost think so, too, for it’s actually beginning to feel chilly up here. How blood-red the sun has turned. Mark my words; we are in for a storm this evening, and I doubt any embarkation being possible to-morrow. I know these old shores well.”
“If you are chilly, Flora,” he says almost bitterly, “we had better make haste down the Crag Vale. It would not do for you to catch cold.” Her evident desire to turn the conversation has not escaped him. It hurts him, and he shows it.
She marks the bitter tone of his voice. Flora knows Estcourt so well. A woman can generally read a man pretty correctly if she chooses to; of a certainty if the man loves her.
She faces him suddenly with the glow of the blood-red sun lighting up her handsome face. She is earnest in what she is going to say, and she looks it.
“Estcourt, dear old Estcourt, let there be no misunderstanding between us two, and on the eve of parting. This may be the last opportunity of telling you what I wish to. Don’t gibe me as cold and heartless, for it is not true, not true. Do I not know how chivalrously and devotedly you have loved me, and am I not grateful to you for your noble and generous love? Why should I ask the question, because you know it? You know I would not speak untruly, and I tell you that your love is very precious to me, and I value your great friendship more than anybody else’s in this world. Were you not my first friend? Am I likely to forget that? But, Estcourt, dear old man, you must not throw your love away on me, for I shall never marry again. I shall always look on you as my first, best, and truest friend, and love you dearly, very dearly as such, but I can never marry again—no, Estcourt, never!”
“Nor I,” he answers quietly, with a sad smile. “You are hardly the woman to bid a man marry where he does not love. Flora, I have loved you ever since I first saw you; I shall never love any one else but you. At least you will do me the justice to believe that I am as unalterable as you are. Let us never bring this subject up again. Let it bide by the Crag Vale Cairn.”
He kisses her hand tenderly and respectfully, and then he lets it fall.
“Let’s go down now, Flora dear,” he says gently. “I wonder why Ravensdale’s smack has not turned the point yet. It ought to be round by now if Léonie were right.”
“I’ll back her to be right,” answers Flora, with a slight laugh. “She’s not likely to mislead Gloria, who, by-the-bye, I saw turning the point in her coracle quite ten minutes ago. They’ll be round in a second, I daresay.”
The two scramble down the rough face of the mountain side in silence. The thoughts of both are busy. Suddenly, however, Estcourt brings himself to a halt and calls out to Flora, who is a little ahead of him,