The gray-green sward was still dotted with the quaint formation close to Marguerite, but she had stopped harvesting them, and sat idly—a strange thing for her to do—evidently absorbed in the evolutions of the gulls, which kept plunging headlong down to the blue waves, apparently for no other purpose than to fly immediately up again and preen their plumage in the veiled sunlight of the cliff-top.
There was an indefinite expression in Marguerite’s attitude which had never been there before: not lassitude, not ennui, but a queer lack of that verve and elasticity hitherto one of her greatest charms. Her delicious face, so like the pastel in the boudoir of the volière suite, was much as usual beneath the brim of her sailor-hat, her slim waist as supple, her shoulders as straight and well drilled as ever, and yet, and yet—?
Nobody had noticed any change in her, however, so change assuredly there could not be.
A quick step behind her made her turn and see Basil advancing in long strides from the “castle-path”—as the yard-wide track westward along the falaise is distinguished from the one in the opposite direction.
“Had a pleasant ride?” she queried, as he came up, instinctively making room for him beside her, as though there had not been mile after mile of room on both interminable stretches to east and to west.
“Yes,” he replied, lowering himself to the grass at her side and pushing back his cap to let the strong sea-breeze cool his forehead. “A very nice ride. But why didn’t you come with us, my dear little ‘Gamin’?”
His dear little “Gamin” resumed her contemplation of the whirling gulls, her eyes averted from him.
“Oh,” she replied, lightly, “I didn’t feel like riding to-day. Besides, these mushrooms needed cutting.”
Basil laughed. “A fine excuse!” he declared. “And as to your not feeling like riding, you who, so to speak, have been born on horseback—a little Centauress!”
He bent sideways to see her face, but she petulantly left a mere profile for his inspection.