"May I sit with you awhile, Cynthia ?" She moved aside to make room for him, as though the broad cliff had been a narrow ledge, and with the sigh of a weary man finding a resting-place at last, he sank down beside her.
There was a tenderness in his voice that set her pulses stirring wildly.
Did she guess aright the reason that had caused him to break his journey and return?
That he had done so--no matter what the reason--she thanked God from her inmost heart, as for a miracle that had saved him from the doom awaiting him in London town.
"Am I presumptuous, child, to think that haply the meditation in which I found you rapt was for one, unworthy though he be, who went hence but some few days since ?" The ambiguous question drove every thought from her mind, filling it to overflowing with the supreme good of his presence, and the frantic hope that she had read aright the reason of it.
"Have I conjectured rightly ?" he asked, since she kept silence.
"Mayhap you have," she whispered in return, and then, marvelling at her boldness, blushed.

He glanced sharply at her from narrowing eyes.

It was not the answer he had looked to hear.
As a father might have done he took the slender hand that rested upon the grass beside him, and she, poor child, mistaking the promptings of that action, suffered it to lie in his strong grasp.

With averted head she gazed upon the sea below, until a mist of tears rose up to blot it out.

The breeze seemed full of melody and gladness.