"But I am afraid," fluttered from her pale lips. "When I gaze into your eyes it is hard—"
He stood over her in such quiet, breathless sympathy that presently she looked up, thinking he was gone.
His glance caught and held hers. She got up, allowed him to take her hands and press them to his lips, and to place on her head the hat that had fallen to the ground.
"I will say nothing more now," he murmured, "you are shocked and upset. We had better go home."
"Come and be presented to Mrs. Nimmo," suddenly said a saucy, laughing voice.
Rose started nervously. Her sister Perside had caught sight of them,—teasing, yet considerate Perside, since she had bestowed only one glance on the lovers, and had then gone sauntering past the mouth of the cave, out to the wide array of black rocks beyond them. She carried a hooked stick over her shoulder, and a tin pail in her hand, and sometimes she looked back at a second girl, similarly equipped, who was running down the grassy road after her.
Nothing could have made Rose more quickly recover herself. "It is not the time of perigee,—you will find nothing," she called after Perside; then she added to Vesper, in a low, shy voice, "She seeks lobsters. She danced so much at the picnic that she was too tired to go home, and had to stay here with cousins."
"Times and seasons do not matter for some things," returned Perside, gaily, over her shoulder; "one has the fun."
Narcisse stopped digging his bare toes in the sand and shrieked, delightedly, "Aunt Perside, aunt Perside, do you know the Englishman returns to my mother and me? He will never leave us, and I am not to go to my grandmother." Then, fearful that his assertions had been too strong, he averted his gaze from the two approaching people, and fixed it on the blazing sun.
"Will you promise not to make a scene when I leave to-morrow?" said Vesper.