'I expect they are envious and saying things about
us, don't you?' she would whisper to Knight with a stealthy smile.
'Oh no,' he would answer unconcernedly. 'Why should they envy us,
and what can they say?'
'Not any harm, of course,' Elfride replied, 'except such as this:
"How happy those two are! she is proud enough now." What makes it
worse,' she continued in the extremity of confidence, 'I heard
those two cricketing men say just now, "She's the nobbiest girl on
the boat." But I don't mind it, you know, Harry.'
'I should hardly have supposed you did, even if you had not told
me,' said Knight with great blandness.
She was never tired of asking her lover questions and admiring his
answers, good, bad, or indifferent as they might be. The evening
grew dark and night came on, and lights shone upon them from the
horizon and from the sky.
'Now look there ahead of us, at that halo in the air, of silvery
brightness. Watch it, and you will see what it comes to.'
She watched for a few minutes, when two white lights emerged from
the side of a hill, and showed themselves to be the origin of the
halo.
'What a dazzling brilliance! What do they mark?'
'The South Foreland: they were previously covered by the cliff.'
'What is that level line of little sparkles--a town, I suppose?'
'That's Dover.'
All this time, and later, soft sheet lightning expanded from a
cloud in their path, enkindling their faces as they paced up and
down, shining over the water, and, for a moment, showing the
horizon as a keen line.
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