"And sometimes I used to dream of a woman who would some day come into my life—and I used to crawl to the edge of the crag and lean over and look into the white foam below, until I got dizzy—looking for her face. It seemed her face must be in the white foam—foolish, wasn't it?"
Cary ran her finger along the ledge of the window.
"We all have our dreams."
Trevelyan watched her, as she turned her face again to the window. The mist outside increased and seemed to muffle the beat of the sea and all the sounds of nature, and it hung around her and softened her face into wonderful curves. He turned his eyes away from her suddenly. He could have crushed that face in his hands, bringing it up to his own—
"Mactier will be around in an hour," he said after a while in a matter of fact way, "and then I'll drive you about the place a bit before we return. We can easily make it and be back for dinner."
"Yes?" asked Cary, absent-mindedly.
"Come! Wake up! And look around you! Isn't this a fine old hall?" But Trevelyan's voice lacked enthusiasm.
Cary turned and looked around her. Her dream spell had passed. The odd throbbing in her throat, she had felt long ago in London, the evening she had bidden Trevelyan good-bye, returned with triple force. A wave of color swept over the usual pallor of her skin; her eyes were shining. Cary was transformed.
"Fine?" her voice pulsed with the enthusiasm Trevelyan's had lacked. "It's the finest old hall in all the world! The dearest old home! Take me over it—from the top to the bottom, and show me where you and John and Tom Cameron used to play!"
Trevelyan led her from room to room; passing quickly this one, that held memories of his mother; pausing on the threshold of another, to tell the story of the Scotch boy's playtime; to show to her the first stag's head, shot when hunting with Mactier. Trevelyan told the story well, for he loved with all the unyielding strength of an unyielding nature, the memories his words called up. Now it was how Tom and he had slipped out of the window one night and scaled the ivy covered turret wall, that they might investigate the old cave down at the water's edge, by the light of the waning moon. Mactier had told them strange tales of the happenings in the cave when the moon was on the wane. Again it was the day he had stumbled with his gun and the bullet had entered his thigh; how old Mactier had flung him across his shoulders, and borne him home through the darkness of the falling night. Again it was the morning his mother had died; how he had been awakened by the hurrying of many feet, and starting up in bed had found his father bending over him, calling him by name.