“But you are not content, Mr. Trelyon,” she said.  “I always notice that whenever you get to a dangerous place you are never satisfied unless you are putting your life in peril.  Wouldn’t you like to ride your black horse down the face of this precipice? or wouldn’t you like to clamber down blindfold?  Why does a man generally seem to be anxious to get rid of his life?”

“Perhaps it ain’t of much use to him,” he said coolly.

“You ought not to say that,” she answered in a low voice.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t mean to break my neck yet a while; but if I did, who would miss me?  I suppose my mother would play half a dozen a day more operas or oratorios, or stuff of that sort, and there would be twenty parsons in the house for one there is at present.  And some of the brats about the place would miss an occasional sixpence; which would be better for their health.  And Dick—­I suppose they’d sell him to some fool of a Londoner, who would pound his knees out in the Park—­he would miss me too.”

“And these are all,” she said, “who would miss you?  You are kind to your friends.”

“Why, would you?” he said with a stare of surprise; and then, seeing she would not speak, he continued with a laugh, “I like the notion of my making an object of general compassion of myself.  Did the poor dear tumble off a rock into the sea?  And where was its mother’s apron-string?  I’m not going to break my neck yet a while, Miss Wenna; so don’t you think I’m going to let you off your promise to pay me back for those sewing-machines.”

“I have told you, Mr. Trelyon,” she said with some dignity, “that we shall pay you back every farthing of the price of them.”

He began to whistle in an impertinent manner.  He clearly placed no great faith in the financial prospects of that sewing club.

They had some light luncheon in the remote little inn, and Mrs. Rosewarne was pleased to see her ordinarily demure and preoccupied daughter in such high and careless spirits.  It was not a splendid banquet.  The chamber was not a gorgeous one, for the absence of ornament and the enormous thickness of the walls told of the house being shut up in the winter months and abandoned to the fury of the western gales, when the wild sea came hurling up the face of these steep cliffs and blowing over the land.  But they paid little attention to any lack of luxury.  There was a beautiful blue sea shining in the distance.  The sunlight was falling hotly on the green sward of the rocks outside, but all the same a fresh, cool breeze came blowing in at the open window.  They let the time pass easily, with pleasant talk and laughter.