'
'That is delightful. Whenever I find you have done a foolish
thing I am glad, because it seems to bring you a little nearer to
me, who have done many.' And Elfride thought again of her enemy
asleep under the deck they trod.
All up the coast, prominences singled themselves out from
recesses. Then a rosy sky spread over the eastern sea and behind
the low line of land, flinging its livery in dashes upon the thin
airy clouds in that direction. Every projection on the land
seemed now so many fingers anxious to catch a little of the liquid
light thrown so prodigally over the sky, and after a fantastic
time of lustrous yellows in the east, the higher elevations along
the shore were flooded with the same hues. The bluff and bare
contours of Start Point caught the brightest, earliest glow of
all, and so also did the sides of its white lighthouse, perched
upon a shelf in its precipitous front like a mediaeval saint in a
niche. Their lofty neighbour Bolt Head on the left remained as
yet ungilded, and retained its gray.
Then up came the sun, as it were in jerks, just to seaward of the
easternmost point of land, flinging out a Jacob's-ladder path of
light from itself to Elfride and Knight, and coating them with
rays in a few minutes. The inferior dignitaries of the shore--
Froward Point, Berry Head, and Prawle--all had acquired their
share of the illumination ere this, and at length the very
smallest protuberance of wave, cliff, or inlet, even to the
innermost recesses of the lovely valley of the Dart, had its
portion; and sunlight, now the common possession of all, ceased to
be the wonderful and coveted thing it had been a short half hour
before.
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