She turned her face landward and strained her eyes to discern, if possible, some sign of Owen’s return.  Nothing was visible save the strikingly brilliant, still landscape.  The wide concave which lay at the back of the hill in this direction was blazing with the western light, adding an orange tint to the vivid purple of the heather, now at the very climax of bloom, and free from the slightest touch of the invidious brown that so soon creeps into its shades.  The light so intensified the colours that they seemed to stand above the surface of the earth and float in mid-air like an exhalation of red.  In the minor valleys, between the hillocks and ridges which diversified the contour of the basin, but did not disturb its general sweep, she marked brakes of tall, heavy-stemmed ferns, five or six feet high, in a brilliant light-green dress—­a broad riband of them with the path in their midst winding like a stream along the little ravine that reached to the foot of the hill, and delivered up the path to its grassy area.  Among the ferns grew holly bushes deeper in tint than any shadow about them, whilst the whole surface of the scene was dimpled with small conical pits, and here and there were round ponds, now dry, and half overgrown with rushes.

The last bell of the steamer rang.  Cytherea had forgotten herself, and what she was looking for.  In a fever of distress lest Owen should be left behind, she gathered up in her hand the corners of her handkerchief, containing specimens of the shells, plants, and fossils which the locality produced, started off to the sands, and mingled with the knots of visitors there congregated from other interesting points around; from the inn, the cottages, and hired conveyances that had returned from short drives inland.  They all went aboard by the primitive plan of a narrow plank on two wheels —­the women being assisted by a rope.  Cytherea lingered till the very last, reluctant to follow, and looking alternately at the boat and the valley behind.  Her delay provoked a remark from Captain Jacobs, a thickset man of hybrid stains, resulting from the mixed effects of fire and water, peculiar to sailors where engines are the propelling power.

’Now then, missy, if you please.  I am sorry to tell ’ee our time’s up.  Who are you looking for, miss?’

’My brother—­he has walked a short distance inland; he must be here directly.  Could you wait for him—­just a minute?’

‘Really, I am afraid not, m’m.’  Cytherea looked at the stout, round-faced man, and at the vessel, with a light in her eyes so expressive of her own opinion being the same, on reflection, as his, and with such resignation, too, that, from an instinctive feeling of pride at being able to prove himself more humane than he was thought to be—­works of supererogation are the only sacrifices that entice in this way—­and that at a very small cost, he delayed the boat till some among the passengers began to murmur.