astle rails, watch the setting sun gradually withdrawing itself
over their stern into a huge bank of livid cloud with golden edges that
rose to meet it.

She was childishly full of life and spirits, though in walking up and
down with him before the other passengers, and getting noticed by them,
she was at starting rather confused, it being the first time she had
shown herself so openly under that kind of protection. 'I expect they
are envious and saying things about us, don't you?' she would whisper to
Knight with a stealthy smile.

'Oh no,' he would answer unconcernedly. 'Why should they envy us, and
what can they say?'

'Not any harm, of course,' Elfride replied, 'except such as this: "How
happy those two are! she is proud enough now." What makes it worse,' she
continued in the extremity of confidence, 'I heard those two cricketing
men say just now, "She's the nobbiest girl on the boat." But I don't
mind it, you know, Harry.'

'I should hardly have supposed you did, even if you had not told me,'
said Knight with great blandness.

She was never tired of asking her lover questions and admiring his
answers, good, bad, or indifferent as they might be. The evening grew
dark and night came on, and lights shone upon them from the horizon and
from the sky.

'Now look there ahead of us, at that halo in the air, of silvery
brightness. Watch it, and you will see what it comes to.'

She watched for a few minutes, when two white lights emerged from the
side of a hill, and showed themselves to be the origin of the halo.

'What a dazzling brilliance! What do they mark?'

'The South Foreland: they were previously covered by the cliff.'

'What is that level line of little sparkles--a town, I suppose?'

'That's Dover.'

All this time, and later, soft sheet lightning expanded from a cloud in
their path, enkindling their faces as they paced up and down, shining
over the water, and, for a moment, showing the horizon as a keen line.

Elfride slept soundly that night. Her first thought the next morning was
the thrilling one that Knight was as close at hand as when they were
at home at Endelstow, and her first sight, on looking out of the cabin
window, was the perpendicular face of Beachy Head, gleaming white in a
brilliant six-o'clock-in-the-morning sun. This fair daybreak, however,
soon changed its aspect. A cold wind and a pale mist descended upon the
sea, and seemed to threaten a dreary day.

When they were nearing South