“I couldn’t have stood it much longer,” Mrs. Elliot confided to Mrs. Thornbury, but the excitement of being at the top in another moment and seeing the view prevented any one from answering her.  One after another they came out on the flat space at the top and stood overcome with wonder.  Before them they beheld an immense space—­grey sands running into forest, and forest merging in mountains, and mountains washed by air, the infinite distances of South America.  A river ran across the plain, as flat as the land, and appearing quite as stationary.  The effect of so much space was at first rather chilling.  They felt themselves very small, and for some time no one said anything.  Then Evelyn exclaimed, “Splendid!” She took hold of the hand that was next her; it chanced to be Miss Allan’s hand.

“North—­South—­East—­West,” said Miss Allan, jerking her head slightly towards the points of the compass.

Hewet, who had gone a little in front, looked up at his guests as if to justify himself for having brought them.  He observed how strangely the people standing in a row with their figures bent slightly forward and their clothes plastered by the wind to the shape of their bodies resembled naked statues.  On their pedestal of earth they looked unfamiliar and noble, but in another moment they had broken their rank, and he had to see to the laying out of food.  Hirst came to his help, and they handed packets of chicken and bread from one to another.

As St. John gave Helen her packet she looked him full in the face and said: 

“Do you remember—­two women?”

He looked at her sharply.

“I do,” he answered.

“So you’re the two women!” Hewet exclaimed, looking from Helen to Rachel.

“Your lights tempted us,” said Helen.  “We watched you playing cards, but we never knew that we were being watched.”

“It was like a thing in a play,” Rachel added.

“And Hirst couldn’t describe you,” said Hewet.

It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her.

Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.

“I don’t know of anything more dreadful,” he said, pulling at the joint of a chicken’s leg, “than being seen when one isn’t conscious of it.  One feels sure one has been caught doing something ridiculous—­looking at one’s tongue in a hansom, for instance.”

Now the others ceased to look at the view, and drawing together sat down in a circle round the baskets.

“And yet those little looking-glasses in hansoms have a fascination of their own,” said Mrs. Thornbury.  “One’s features look so different when one can only see a bit of them.”

“There will soon be very few hansom cabs left,” said Mrs. Elliot.  “And four-wheeled cabs—­I assure you even at Oxford it’s almost impossible to get a four-wheeled cab.”

“I wonder what happens to the horses,” said Susan.