"Hush! sir, you prate something too wildly; nor do I wish to hear you
repeat Margaret's idle observations."

"But mother, I know you long yourself to walk once again in your own
dear sunshiny orangery?"

"My Hugh" said Lady Greville without attending to his question, "has
Margaret shewn you the descent to the walk below the cliffs, and have
you brought me the shells you promised to gather?"

"How? with the spring tide beating the foot of the rocks, and the sea
raging so furiously that the very gulls dared not take their
delicious perch upon the waves. Tomorrow perhaps--"

"What now, my Hugh, afraid to venture? When I walked on the sands at
noon, there was a bowshot spare."

"No! mother, no, not afraid, not afraid to venture a fall, or meet a
sprinkling of sea spray, and good truth I have enough to do with
fears in doors, here in this grim old mansion, without--"

"Fears?"--

"Yes, fears, dear mother," said the boy, looking archly round at his
attendant, who waited in the back ground, and who vainly sought by
signs to silence her unruly charge.

"Do you know that the figure of King Herod, cruel Herod, the murderer
of his wife, and the slayer of the innocents, stalks down every night