"And I am delighted to see you again, Leopold," she replied gazing earnestly into his handsome brown face, and then measuring with her eye his form from head to foot. "How tall and large you have grown!"
We are inclined to believe, from the looks she bestowed upon him, that she fully indorsed the opinion of the young ladies of the academy. Rosabel was taller, more mature, and even more beautiful than when he had seen her last. She was dressed to go on shore; but as soon as she saw Leopold and the Rosabel, a new idea seemed to take possession of her mind.
"I want to go to High Rock this minute!" exclaimed the fair girl. "I have been thinking about the place every day since I was here last year; and I want to go there before I land at Rockhaven."
Her father objected, her mother objected, and the grim old skipper of the Orion declared there would be a shower and a squall, if not a tempest, before night. But Rosabel, though a very good girl in the main, was just a little wilful at times. She insisted, and Leopold was engaged to convey her to the romantic region. He was seventeen and she was fifteen; and no young fellow was ever happier than he was as he took his place at the helm with Rosabel opposite him in the standing-room.
No other member of the party was willing to join her in the excursion, for Belle Peterson and Charley Redmond were not passengers in the yacht this time. If Leopold had been a young New Yorker, perhaps her father and mother would have objected to her going alone with him. As it was, they regarded him, in some sense, as a servant, and they intrusted her to his care as they would have done with a conductor on the train, or with the driver of the stage. He was simply the boatman to them—a very good-looking fellow, it is true, but not dangerous, because he was not the young lady's social equal. He always treated her with the utmost respect and deference.
The breeze was fresh, and in a few moments Leopold landed her on the narrow beach beneath the lofty rock. The maiden left the boat, climbed the high rock, and wandered about among the wild cliffs and chasms, all alone, for Leopold could not leave the inanimate Rosabel—which the rude sea might injure—to follow the animate and beautiful Rosabel in her ramble on the shore.
She was gone an hour, and then an other hour. He called to her, but she came not, and even the warning of the muttering thunder did not hasten her return. But she came at last, and Leopold hastened to get under way, though he feared that the storm would be down upon him before he could reach the Orion.
"We are going to have a tremendous shower," said Leopold, anxiously, as he shoved off the boat.
"I'm not afraid; and if I get wet, it won't hurt me," replied Rosabel, who actually enjoyed the flashing lightning and the booming thunder, and gazed with undaunted eyes upon the black masses of cloud that were rolling up from the south-east and from the north-west.
"It looks just exactly as it did on the day the Waldo was wrecked," added Leopold. "It blew a perfect hurricane then, and it may to-day."