d Lumley, tired of
struggling with a pile of books and smoking cigarettes, had seen the
change from his study window, and seizing his cap and a stick had
hurried out to taste the strong salt wind and to watch the cloud effects
from the cliffs; and, as he had rounded the corner, he had come face to
face with Margharita.

She was standing on the highest point of the cliffs, her skirts blowing
wildly around her tall, slim figure, and making strange havoc with her
hair. Her face was turned seaward, but at the sound of his footsteps she
turned quickly round. His heart beat fast for a moment, and then he
remembered their parting earlier in the day.

"I am sorry to have disturbed you," he said coldly, raising his cap. "If
I had had the least idea that you were here I would have taken the other
path."

He was passing on, but as she made him no answer he glanced up at her
face. Then all thought of going vanished. There were glistening tears in
her dark eyes, and her lips were quivering.

"Forgive me, Miss Briscoe," he said, springing up to her side. "I was a
clumsy idiot, but I was afraid that you would think that I had followed
you. May I stay?"

She nodded, and turned her face away from him.

"Yes, stay," she answered softly; "stay and talk to me. Don't think me
silly, but I was feeling sad--lonely, perhaps--and you have always
spoken so kindly to me, that the change--it was a little too sudden."

"I was a brute," he whispered gently.

The change in her was wonderful. Her voice was soft, and, glancing up at
her face, he could see that it was stained with tears. At that moment he
felt that he would have given the world to have taken her into his arms
and held her there, but he thrust the thought resolutely from him. Now
was his opportunity to teach her to trust him. He would not even suffer
his voice to take too tender a note.

"The fresh air is glorious after a day cooped up in a little study," he
said lightly. "See the curlews there, flying round and round over the
marshes. Tennyson's old home lies that way, you know. Do you wonder that
this flat country, with its strange twilight effects, should have laid
hold of him so powerfully?"

"It is strange and weird," she murmured thoughtfully.

"Weird is the very word for it. Tennyson might have written that lovely
but hackneyed poem, 'Locksley Hall,' from this very spot. The place
seems born to evoke sentiment, and a stormy twilight like this seems to
fit in with it.