'Then I won't be alone with you any more. Unkind, to wound me so!' She laughed at her own absurdity but persisted.
'Come, Elfie, let's make it up and be friends.'
'Say you would save me, then, and let him drown.'
'I would save you--and him too.'
'And let him drown. Come, or you don't love me!' she teasingly went on.
'And let him drown,' he ejaculated despairingly.
'There; now I am yours!' she said, and a woman's flush of triumph lit her eyes.
'Only one earring, miss, as I'm alive,' said Unity on their entering the hall.
With a face expressive of wretched misgiving, Elfride's hand flew like an arrow to her ear.
'There!' she exclaimed to Stephen, looking at him with eyes full of reproach.
'I quite forgot, indeed. If I had only remembered!' he answered, with a conscience-stricken face.
She wheeled herself round, and turned into the shrubbery. Stephen followed.
'If you had told me to watch anything, Stephen, I should have religiously done it,' she capriciously went on, as soon as she heard him behind her.
'Forgetting is forgivable.'
'Well, you will find it, if you want me to respect you and be engaged to you when we have asked papa.' She considered a moment, and added more seriously, 'I know now where I dropped it, Stephen. It was on the cliff. I remember a faint sensation of some change about me, but I was too absent to think of it then. And that's where it is now, and you must go and look there.'
'I'll go at once.'
And he strode away up the valley, under a broiling sun and amid the deathlike silence of early afternoon. He ascended, with giddy-paced haste, the windy range of rocks to where they had sat, felt and peered about the stones and crannies, but Elfride's stray jewel was nowhere to be seen. Next Stephen slowly retraced his steps, and, pausing at a cross-road to reflect a while, he left the plateau and struck downwards across some fields, in the direction of Endelstow House.
He walked along the path by the river without the slightest hesitation as to its bearing, apparently quite familiar with every inch of the ground. As the shadows began to lengthen and the sunlight to mellow, he passed through two wicket-gates, and drew near the outskirts of Endelstow Park. The river now ran along under the park fence, previous to entering the grove itself, a little further on.
Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a slightly elevated spot of ground, round which the river took a turn. The characteristic feature of this snug habitation was its one chimney in the gable end, its squareness of form disguised by a huge cloak of ivy, which had grown so luxuriantly and extended so far from its base, as to increase the apparent bulk of the chimney to the dimensions of a tower. Some little distance from the back of the house rose the park boundary, and over this were to be seen the sycamores of the grove, making slow inclinations to the just-awakening air.