T

The situation in which the two principal characters of this story were
left at the close of the preceding chapter was so embarrassing to both
that for several seconds they continued to stare at each other in
silent amazement. Mary Darrell, her face alternately flushing and
paling with confusion, seemed fascinated and incapable of motion. In
spite of Peveril's astonishingly disreputable appearance, she at once
recognized him as being the young stranger whom she had seen twice
before, and had even helped out of an awkward predicament. She also
knew that he had in some way aroused her father's enmity. But he had
taken his departure from that vicinity several days earlier, and,
though she had wondered if he would ever come back, she had not really
expected to see him again.

Now to come upon him so suddenly, looking so dreadful, and to realize
that, incredible as it seemed, he must have learned the secret of the
cavern, was all so bewildering and startling as to very nearly take
away her breath. So she simply stared.

It must be confessed that Peveril's present appearance was not so
prepossessing as it had been at other times, and might be again. He
had lost his hat, his hair was uncombed, his hands were bruised and
soiled, while his clothing was torn and covered with dirt from the
underground passages through which he had so recently struggled. But
his face was quite clean, for he had just given it a thorough
scrubbing, and to it the girl's gaze was principally directed.

It was Peveril who first broke the embarrassing silence.

"I am very glad to see you again," he said, "and to find that you are
a real flesh-and-blood girl, instead of only a vision, or a sort of a
rock-nymph, as I imagined you might be from the way you disappeared
that other time."

"What makes you think I am a girl?" asked Mary Darrell, whose face was
the only part of her that Peveril could see.

"Why, because," he began, hesitatingly--"because you are too
good-looking to be anything but a girl, and because--Oh, well, because
I am certain that you are. What else could you be, anyway?"

Mary Darrell's face was crimson, but still she answered, stoutly, "I
might be a boy, you know."

"No, indeed. No boy could blush as you are doing at this moment."

In reply, the girl rose to her feet and stepped out on the ledge in
full view of the young man. She was clad in a golf suit, neat-fitting
and becoming, but masculine in every detail. She had be