Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/173

162 as he heard steps passing along the loose stones that made a sort of stairway from the high ground, down between two steep and leaning sides of rock, and looked up in anxious hope of welcoming some boatman who could help him to a vessel. As he did so, the morning sun, shining from the east, that faced him as he turned, fell full upon his head and throat, and standing thus, catching the brightest gusten of the morning beams, the barcarolo dress served little to disguise him, and through the mist-wreaths that still hovered round all the upper border of the shore, his eyes, ere escape or avoidance was possible, met those of the man above upon the broken tiers of cliff.

They were the keen blue serene eyes of Victor Vane.

For a moment they looked in silence at each other, met thus face to face, in the coolness of the young day, in the solitude of the unfrequented shore. Then, with an easy supple grace, the man, in whom Erceldoune's instinct felt a foe, swung himself downward from ledge to ledge, and dropped upon the sands beside him, with the common courtesies of a carelessly astonished and complimentary greeting.

"I came to bathe; I am staying for a villeggiatura