ck and began
kissing her.

"Oh, oh! thank God--thank God! Oh, oh, oh!"

Whereupon Pigott, being a very sensible person, took her by the
shoulders and tried to shake her, but it was no joke shaking a person
of her height. Angela stood firm, and Pigott oscillated--that was the
only visible result.

"Now, then, miss," she said, giving up the shaking as a bad job, "no
highstrikes, _if_ you please. Just you put on your hat and come for a
bit of a walk in this queer place with me. I haven't brought you up by
hand this two-and-twenty year or thereabouts, to see you go off in
highstrikes, like a housemaid as has seen a ghost."

Angela stopped, and did as she was bid.

CHAPTER LXXVI

Arthur read his letter, and his heart burnt with passionate love of
the true woman he had dared to doubt. Then he flung himself upon the
grass and looked at the ocean that sparkled and heaved before him, and
tried to think; but as yet he could not. The engines of his mind were
reversed full speed, whilst his mind itself, with quick shudders and
confusion, still forged ahead upon its former course. He rose, and
cast upon the scene around him that long look we give to the place
where a great happiness has found us.

The sun was sinking fast behind the mountains, turning their slabbed
sides and soaring pinnacles to giant shields and spears of fire.
Beneath their mass, shadows--forerunners of the night--crept over the
forests and the crested rollers, whilst further from him the ocean
heaved in a rosy glow. Above, the ever-changing vault of heaven was of
a beauty that no brush could paint. On a ground-work of burning red
were piled, height upon height, deep ridges of purples and of
crimsons. Nearer the horizon the colours brightened to a dazzling
gold, till at length they narrowed to the white intensity of the half-
hidden eye of the sun vanishing behind the mountains; whilst
underlying the steady splendour of the upper skies flushed soft and
melting shades of rose and lilac. Blue space above him was broken up
by fantastic clouds that floated all on fire, and glowed like molten
metal. The reflection, too, of all these massed and varied lights in
the azure of the eastern skies was full of sharp contrasts and soft
surprises, and a travelling eagle, sailing through space before them,
seemed to gather all their tints upon his vivid wings, and, as he
passed away, to leave a rainbow track of broken light.

But such a