he lazily folded up the
sheet.

"Never mind, of course," she answered, recovering herself. "How you
startled me, Mr. Bingham! I had no idea there was anybody on the beach."

"It is quite free, is it not?" he answered, getting up. "I thought you
were going to trample me into the pebbles. It's almost alarming when one
is thinking about a Sunday nap to see a young lady striding along, then
suddenly stop, stamp her foot, and say, 'No, never!' Luckily I knew that
you were about or I should really have been frightened."

"How did you know that I was about?" Beatrice asked a little defiantly.
It was no business of his to observe her movements.

"In two ways. Look!" he said, pointing to a patch of white sand. "That,
I think, is your footprint."

"Well, what of it?" said Beatrice, with a little laugh.

"Nothing in particular, except that it is your footprint," he answered.
"Then I happened to meet old Edward, who was loafing along, and he
informed me that you and Mr. Davies had gone up the beach; there is his
footprint--Mr. Davies's, I mean--but you don't seem to have been very
sociable, because here is yours right in the middle of it. Therefore you
must have been walking in Indian file, and a little way back in parallel
lines, with quite thirty yards between you."

"Why do you take the trouble to observe things so closely?" she asked in
a half amused and half angry tone.

"I don't know--a habit of the legal mind, I suppose. One might make
quite a romance out of those footprints on the sand, and the little
subsequent events. But you have not heard all my thrilling tale. Old
Edward also informed me that he saw your sister, Miss Elizabeth, going
along the cliff almost level with you, from which he concluded that you
had argued as to the shortest way to the Red Rocks and were putting the
matter to the proof."

"Elizabeth," said Beatrice, turning a shade paler; "what can she have
been doing, I wonder."

"Taking exercise, probably, like yourself. Well, I seat myself with my
pipe in the shadow of that rock, when suddenly I see Mr. Davies coming
along towards Bryngelly as though he were walking for a wager, his hat
fixed upon the back of his head. Literally he walked over my legs and
never saw me. Then you follow and ejaculate, 'No, never!'--and that is
the end of my story. Have I your permission to walk with you, or shall I
interfere with the development of the plot?"

"There is no plot, and as you said just now the beach