that he was not inclined to pay a set of stupid and untrue compliments the
instant the portfolio was opened, but, on the contrary, in order to speak
what was real about them, would take the trouble to make himself in some
adequate measure acquainted with them. I therefore, to Wynnie's relief, I
fear, strolled after him, seeing no harm in taking a peep at his person,
while he was taking a peep at my daughter's mind. I went round the tower
to the other side, and there saw him at a little distance below me, but
further out on a great rock that overhung the sea, connected with the cliff
by a long narrow isthmus, a few yards lower than the cliff itself, only
just broad enough to admit of a footpath along its top, and on one side
going sheer down with a smooth hard rock-face to the sands below. The other
side was less steep, and had some grass upon it. But the path was too
narrow, and the precipice too steep, for me to trust my head with the
business of guiding my feet along it. So I stood and saw him from the
mainland--saw his head at least bent over the drawings; saw how slowly he
turned from one to the other; saw how, after having gone over them once,
he turned to the beginning and went over them again, even more slowly than
before; saw how he turned the third time to the first. Then, getting tired,
I went back to the group on the down; caught sight of Charlie and Harry
turning heels over head down the slope toward the house; found that my wife
had gone home--in fact, that only Connie and Wynnie were left. The sun
had disappeared under a cloud, and the sea had turned a little slaty; the
yellow flowers in the short down-grass no longer caught the eye with their
gold, and the wind that bent their tops had just the suspicion of an edge
in it. And Wynnie's face looked a little cloudy too, I thought, and I
feared that it was my fault. I fancied there was just a tinge of beseeching
in Connie's eye, as I looked at her, thinking there might be danger for her
in the sunlessness of the wind. But I do not know that all this, even the
clouding of the sun, may not have come out of my own mind, the result of my
not being quite satisfied with myself because of the mood I had been in. My