"Never what, Miss Granger?" he said again, as he lazily folded up the sheet.
"Never mind, of course," she answered, recovering herself. "How you startled me, Mr. Bingham! I had no idea there was anybody on the beach."
"It is quite free, is it not?" he answered, getting up. "I thought you were going to trample me into the pebbles. It's almost alarming when one is thinking about a Sunday nap to see a young lady striding along, then suddenly stop, stamp her foot, and say, 'No, never!' Luckily I knew that you were about or I should really have been frightened."
"How did you know that I was about?" Beatrice asked a little defiantly. It was no business of his to observe her movements.
"In two ways. Look!" he said, pointing to a patch of white sand. "That, I think, is your footprint."
"Well, what of it?" said Beatrice, with a little laugh.
"Nothing in particular, except that it is your footprint," he answered. "Then I happened to meet old Edward, who was loafing along, and he informed me that you and Mr. Davies had gone up the beach; there is his footprint--Mr. Davies's, I mean--but you don't seem to have been very sociable, because here is yours right in the middle of it. Therefore you must have been walking in Indian file, and a little way back in parallel lines, with quite thirty yards between you."
"Why do you take the trouble to observe things so closely?" she asked in a half amused and half angry tone.
"I don't know--a habit of the legal mind, I suppose. One might make quite a romance out of those footprints on the sand, and the little subsequent events. But you have not heard all my thrilling tale. Old Edward also informed me that he saw your sister, Miss Elizabeth, going along the cliff almost level with you, from which he concluded that you had argued as to the shortest way to the Red Rocks and were putting the matter to the proof."
"Elizabeth," said Beatrice, turning a shade paler; "what can she have been doing, I wonder."
"Taking exercise, probably, like yourself. Well, I seat myself with my pipe in the shadow of that rock, when suddenly I see Mr. Davies coming along towards Bryngelly as though he were walking for a wager, his hat fixed upon the back of his head. Literally he walked over my legs and never saw me. Then you follow and ejaculate, 'No, never!'--and that is the end of my story. Have I your permission to walk with you, or shall I interfere with the development of the plot?"