She had thought of him scores of times since their one and only meeting. Had wondered who he was and what he was, and had speculated on the chances of meeting him again. He was the only man she had met since her arrival in England who had impressed her. She had enjoyed her conversations with the fishermen and the farmers and the small shopkeepers, had sampled the curate and the vicar and the few county people who had called at the Hall; but her second thought and her third thought had been given to the lonely man who sat on the cliffs, with his big dreamy eyes fixed on the sunset.
She was glad for some reason that it was he who had found her, and not Sir Charles. Sir Charles would fume and scold and declare there was no possible way of saving her. The "lonely man" might not talk very much, but he would act.
It seemed a long time since he had responded to her cry, but she was not in the least impatient. Confidence was coming steadily back into her heart, and the fascination of the abyss was slowly passing away. She did not dare open her eyes yet. She would wait till the stranger called her again. Her hand and arm were very cramped; she was uncomfortably near the lip of the ledge. Her strength—in spite of the new hope—was a steadily diminishing quantity, but she was quite sure she would be able to hold on a good many minutes yet.
Then clear and distinct came the voice again—from below this time, instead of from above. How wildly her heart throbbed in spite of all her efforts to be calm, but she flung her answer back as cheerily as possible. She would not make herself appear a greater coward than she really was.
"How did you get there?" The question was abrupt, and the voice sounded almost close to her ears.
"My foot slipped and I fell," she replied.
"You fell?" he questioned, in a tone of incredulity, and he swept the face of the cliff above her.
"Oh! I see," he went on a moment later. "You took a path further to the south."
"Cannot you reach me?" she called with an undertone of anxiety in her voice.