"There, you see! He is as safely sheltered as we are by now!"
Miss Charlotte went restlessly to the window.
"I am anxious; he is so delicate, and so rash," she said. "I shall send Penton out along the Quarry Road."
"I will walk to Brent and back for you, Miss Willoughby," said Claud, in his quiet way.
"My dear fellow," said Henry Fowler, "you will scarcely keep your feet."
"Oh, nonsense about that. I'm all right—I have my mackintosh here. I enjoy a good sou'-wester."
"I'll come with you," said Henry at once.
Of course the ladies protested, but the gentlemen were firm; and, having first taken something to keep the cold out, they started forth into all the excitement of a furious gale on the Devonshire coast.
Once fairly out in it, Claud felt that he would not have missed it for worlds. There was such a stimulus in the seething motion of the atmosphere, such a weird fascination in the screaming of the blast and the hoarse roaring of the distant ocean.
"This is rather a wild-goose chase," yelled Henry in his companion's ear.