As
his acquaintance with the subject was not phenomenal, the profit to the
aggrieved listener was small. George, Lady Manorwater, and the two Miss
Afflints sought diligently for a camping-ground, which they finally
found by a clear spring of water on the skirts of a great grey rock.
Meanwhile, Alice Wishart and Lewis, having an inordinate love of high
places, set out for the ridge summit, and reached it to find a wind
blowing from the far Gled valley and cooling the hot air.
Alice found a scrap of rock and climbed to the summit, where she sat
like a small pixie, surveying a wide landscape and her warm and
prostrate companion. Her bright hair and eyes and her entrancing grace
of form made the callous Lewis steal many glances upwards from his lowly
seat. The two had become excellent friends, for the man had that honest
simplicity towards women which is the worst basis for love and the best
for friendship. She felt that at any moment he might call her by some
one or other of the endearing expressions used between men. He, for his
part, was fast drifting from friendship to another feeling, but as yet
he gave no sign of it, and kept up the brusque, kindly manners of his
common life.
As she looked east and north to the heart of the hill-land, her eyes
brightened, and she rose up and strained on tiptoe to scan the farthest
horizon.
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