It had not been much after noon when Frank Greystock reached Portray
Castle, and it was very nearly five when he left it. Of course he had
lunched with the two ladies, and as the conversation before lunch had
been long and interesting, they did not sit down till near three.
Then Lizzie had taken him out to show him the grounds and garden, and
they had clambered together down to the sea-beach. "Leave me here,"
she had said, when he insisted on going because of his friend at the
Cottage. When he suggested that she would want help to climb back up
the rocks to the castle, she shook her head, as though her heart was
too full to admit of a consideration so trifling. "My thoughts flow
more freely here with the surge of the water in my ears, than they
will with that old woman droning to me. I come here often, and know
every rock and every stone." That was not exactly true, as she had
never been down but once before. "You mean to come again?" He told
her that of course he should come again. "I will name neither day nor
hour. I have nothing to take me away. If I am not at the castle I
shall be at this spot. Good-bye, Frank." He took her in his arms and
kissed her,--of course as a brother; and then he clambered up, got on
his pony, and rode away. "I dinna ken just what to mak' o' him," said
Gowran to his wife. "May be he is her coosin; but coosins are nae
that sib that a weedow is to be hailed aboot jist ane as though she
were ony quean at a fair." From which it may be inferred that Mr.
Gowran had watched the pair as they were descending together towards
the shore.

Frank had so much to think of, riding back to the Cottage, that when
he came to the gap, instead of turning round along the wall down the
valley, he took the track right on across the mountain and lost his
way. He had meant to be back at the Cottage by three or four, and yet
had made his visit to the castle so long, that without any losing of
his way he could not have been there before seven. As it was, when
that hour arrived, he was up on the top of a hill, and could again
see Portray Castle clustering down close upon the sea, and the thin
belt of trees, and the shining water beyond;--but of the road to the
Cottage he knew nothing. For a moment he thought of returning to
Portray, till he had taught himself to perceive that the distance was
much greater than it had been from the spot at which he had first
seen the castle in the morning;--and then he turned his pony r