Chapter XXXI
“A worm i’ the bud.”
One day the reviewer said, “Let us go to the cliffs again, Elfride;” and, without consulting her wishes, he moved as if to start at once.
“The cliff of our dreadful adventure?” she inquired, with a shudder. “Death stares me in the face in the person of that cliff.”
Nevertheless, so entirely had she sunk her individuality in his that the remark was not uttered as an expostulation, and she immediately prepared to accompany him.
“No, not that place,” said Knight. “It is ghastly to me, too. That other, I mean; what is its name?—Windy Beak.”
Windy Beak was the second cliff in height along that coast, and, as is frequently the case with the natural features of the globe no less than with the intellectual features of men, it enjoyed the reputation of being the first. Moreover, it was the cliff to which Elfride had ridden with Stephen Smith, on a well-remembered morning of his summer visit.
So, though thought of the former cliff had caused her to shudder at the perils to which her lover and herself had there been exposed, by being associated with Knight only it was not so objectionable as Windy Beak. That place was worse than gloomy, it was a perpetual reproach to her.
But not liking to refuse, she said, “It is further than the other cliff.”
“Yes; but you can ride.”