eased from all those environments that he hated and
dreaded. He would have no more fear when he could take her hand and look
into her eyes.

And now that Miss Gertrude White was actually in Castle Dare--now that
he could walk with her along the lonely mountain-slopes and show her the
wonders of the Western seas and the islands--what was it that still
occasioned that vague unrest? His nervous anxiety that she should be
pleased with all she saw? or a certain critical coldness in her glance?
or the consciousness that he was only entertaining a passing visitor--a
beautiful bird that had alighted on his hand, and that the next moment
would be winging its flight away into the silvery South?

"You are becoming a capital sailor," he said to her one day, with a
proud light on his face. "You have no fear at all of the sea now."

He and she and the cousin Janet--Mr. White had some letters to answer,
and had stayed at home--were in the stern of the gig, and they were
being rowed along the coast below the giant cliffs of Gribun. Certainly
if Miss White had confessed to being a little nervous, she might have
been excused. It was a beautiful, fresh, breezy, summer day; but the
heavy Atlantic swell, that slowly raised and lowered the boat as the men
rowed along, passed gently and smoothly on, and then went booming and
roaring and crashing over the sharp black rocks that were quite close at
hand.

"I think I would soon get over my fear of the sea," she said, gently.

Indeed, it was not that that was most likely to impress her on this
bright day--it was the awful loneliness and desolation of the scene
around her. All along the summit of the great cliffs lay heavy banks of
cloud that moved and wreathed themselves together, with mysterious
patches of darkness here and there that suggested the entrance into far
valleys in the unseen mountains behind. And if the outer surface of
these precipitous cliffs was brightened by sunlight, and if there was a
sprinkling of grass on the ledges, every few minutes they passed the
yawning archway of a huge cavern, around which the sea was roaring with
a muffled and thunderous noise. He thought she would be interested in
the extraordinary number and variety of the sea-birds about--the solemn
cormorants sitting on the ledges, the rock-pigeons shooting out from the
caves, the sea-pyots whirring along the rocks like lightning-flashes of
color, the lordly osprey, with his great wings outstretched and
moti