And that Peter, too, knew they stood on dangerous quicksands when they were alone together, she was sure. This morning, beyond a briefly-worded greeting at breakfast, he had hardly spoken to her, carefully avoiding her, though without seeming to do so, until her departure to Trenby Hall made it no longer necessary. She hoped he would not stay long at Mallow. It would be unbearable to meet him day after day--to feel his eyes resting upon her with the same cool gravity to which he had compelled them this morning, to pretend that he and she meant no more to one another than any two other chance guests at a country house.
Nan's thoughts drove her swiftly down the steep incline which descended towards the cove and, arriving at its foot, she stopped, as everyone must, to obtain the key of the castle from a near-by cottage. The old dame who gave her the key--accepting a shilling in exchange with voluble gratitude--impressed upon her the urgent necessity for returning it on her way back.
"If you please, lady, I've lost more than one key with folks forgettin' to return them," she explained.
"I won't forget," Nan assured her, and forthwith started to make her way to the top of the great promontory on which stands all that still remains of King Arthur's Castle--the fallen stones of an ancient chapel, and a ruined wall enclosing a grassy space where sheep browse peacefully.
Quitting the cottage and turning to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin's Cave. The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end--since what had once been the magician's cave was now a subterranean passage, piercing right through the base of the headland.
For a while Nan loitered on the bridge, gazing at the wild beauty of the scene--the sombre cove where the inrushing waves broke in a smother of spume on the beach, and above, to the left, the wind-scarred, storm-beaten crag rising sheer and wonderful out of the turbulent sea and crowned by those ancient walls about which clung so much of legend and romance.