Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/199

 went home to Dulham, In less than a week she was enjoying the salubrious air and the wide reaches of sand over which the Atlantic ebbs and flows at Bude, where to the west and the south-west there is no opposite shore short of America. She had taken her bicycle with her, but, as she found the roads in that part mostly narrow and hilly, much of her exercise while at Bude was taken on foot, either over the broad sands when the tide was out, or along the downs of the cliff stretching southwards. Mr Whyte was a good walker, and always ready to accompany her, and they conversed mostly on topics of local interest, for both were glad to forget London life, with its depressing influences of the troublous times.

Still these were not to be altogether shut out. Black care sits behind the horseman, and even one of Lesbia’s strong character could not help feeling that at this period there was something or other hovering in the atmosphere of England which was not canny. Undefined and baseless apprehensions about their own private concerns were taking possession of people’s minds, which became morbidly imaginative and irritable; with herself it took the form of an excessive anxiety about her mother’s health, which made her write almost daily, although every letter she received from Dulham might have re-assured her on the subject. She astonished Mrs Whyte one day, with whom she was sauntering over the sands at low water, in a very abstracted mood, by suddenly halting, facing round to the ocean, and saying aloud to herself those words of Macbeth in the dagger scene,—

‘What, my dear?’ asked Mrs Whyte, looking at her with a puzzled expression.