Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/276

256 thought how jolly it would be, when I began work next Monday, to lie on the cliff, with a weed in my mouth, and get up Aristotle, and watch the sea-gulls skimming about, and the ships sinking in the distant west, when an event occurred, which, for a time put all my logic to flight.

 

afternoon, when Nelly and I were returning to the hotel to dinner, from a long ramble over the cliffs, a travelling carriage and four dashed by us. Who could it be? Westcliffe was a very quiet little place, and a carriage and four was not an every-day arrival. "And how strange," said my sister, "there is neither maid nor footman in the rumble;" and, as it went by us, I looked for the coat of arms (Nelly is great in heraldry), and they had evidently been painted out. "Whom can the carriage belong to?"

"Most probably to that grey-haired old gentleman, who is just getting out of it," I replied; for the carriage had drawn up at the door of the hotel. By the time that the gentleman had assisted a middle-aged lady to descend, we had approached them (for our private door was next to the public entrance), and I had a full view of the third occupant of the carriage She was a young lady of not more than twenty years of age, with a pale face of rare beauty, to which an air of deep melancholy gave a peculiar charm. As she stepped from the 