Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.
Knight lowered the glass.
“I think we had better return,” he said. “That cloud which is raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that?”
“Something in the air affects my face.”
“Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,” returned Knight tenderly. “This air would make those rosy that were never so before, one would think—eh, Nature’s spoilt child?”
Elfride’s colour returned again.
“There is more to see behind us, after all,” said Knight.
She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position towards the left.
The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by a single change of shade.
It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff.