As Miss Valery spoke, Nathanael listened in deep thought; then, meeting her eyes, he coloured slightly, but quickly recovering himself, said, in a low tone, “Some time to-day, Anne, I would like to have a little talk with you.”
She assented with an inquiring look. But she seemed to understand Nathanael well enough to content herself with that look, asking no further questions.
“And, for the third important business which should be done to-day, and perhaps the sooner the better, I must certainly take Agatha up Holm Hill, and show her the view of the Channel.”
Agatha drew back from the window. “Ah, not the sea!--I cannot bear the sea.” Anne Valery watched her with peculiar earnestness.
“Nay, I must teach you to admire our magnificent coast. On with your bonnet, and come along that great hill-terrace--do you see it?--with Nathanael and me.”
“But you will be tired,” Mrs. Harper said, reluctant still, yet loth to resist Anne Valery.
“Tired? no! The salt breeze gives me strength--health. I hardly live when I am not in sight of the Channel. Make haste, and let us go, Agatha.”
She seemed so eager, that no further objection was possible. So they soon started--they three only, for Mary had occupation in the house, and the Beauty was mightily averse to exercise and sea-air.
They climbed the steep road, overhung with trees, at whose roots grew clusters of large primrose leaves, showing what a lovely walk it must be in spring; then higher, till all this vegetation ceased, leaving only the short grass cropped by the sheep, the purple thistles, and the furze-bushes, yellow and cheerful all the year round. They then drove along a high ridge for a mile or two, till they got quite out of sight of Kingcombe Holm. Miss Valery talked gaily the whole way; and, as though the sea-breeze truly gave her life, was the very first to propose leaving the carriage and walking on, so as to catch the earliest glimpse of the Channel.
“There!” she said, breathlessly, and quitting Mr. Harper's arm, crossed over to his wife. “There, Agatha!”
It was such a view as in her life the young girl had never beheld. They stood on a high ridge, on one side of which lay a wide champaign of moorland, on the other a valley, bounded by a second ridge, and between the two sloping greenly down, till it terminated in a little bay. Parallel to the valley ran this grand hill-terrace--until it likewise reached the coast, ending abruptly in precipitous gigantic cliffs, against which the tides of centuries might have beat themselves in vain. Beyond all, motionless in the noonday dazzle, and curving itself away in a mist of brightness where the eye failed, was the great, wide, immeasurable sea.