"Don't ridicule yourself. Mary dear." "Why not? But I meant no nice, handsome Christopher Lisle will ever want to look in my eyes and say--" "Will you be quiet, Mary? Why will you be always bringing up Mr Christopher Lisle? I never tease you about Mr Gullick." "Because--because--because--" She did not finish her speech, but burst out into a loud, ringing laugh, full of teasing, malicious mirth, till she saw Claude's flushed face, and then she stopped short. "There, I've done. Which way shall we go?" "I don't care. I feel as if I'd rather stay at home now." "No, no; I won't tease. Shall we go as far as the town?" "No; anywhere you like." "Say somewhere." "Not I. You'll only tease me, and say I had some reason. I'll only go where you choose." "Then you shall, dear. We'll go up the east glen to the fall, and then cross over the hill and come back by the west glen, and you shall tease me as much as you like." "I don't want to tease you." Mary made a grimace as she looked sidewise at herself, but she coloured a little, and was silent for a time. They were already some hundred yards from the great, grey granite mansion, which stood upon a bald bluff of cliff, built within the past thirty years, and by the fancy of its architect made to resemble a stronghold of the Norman times, with its battlements, towers, frowning gateway, moat and drawbridge crossing the deep channel, kept well filled by a spring far up in one of the glens at the back, while the front of the solid-looking, impregnable edifice frowned down upon the glittering sea. "See how grand Castle Dangerous looks from here," said Mary Dillon, as they were about to turn up the glen. "Don't you often feel as if we were two forlorn maidens--I mean," she cried merrily, "a forlorn maiden and a half--shut up in that terrible place waiting for a gallant knight and a half to come and rescue us from the clutches of ogre-like Uncle Gartram?" "Mary, darling," said Claude affectionately, "if you knew how you hurt me, you would cease these mocking allusions to your affliction." "Then I will not hurt you any more, pet. But I am such a sight." "No, you are not. You have, when in repose, the sweetest, cleverest face I ever saw." "Let's be in repose, then." "And you know you are brilliant in intellect, where I am stupid." "Oh! if I could be as stupid!" "And you have the sweetest voice possible. See what gifts these are." "Oh, yes, I suppose so, Claudie, but I don't care for them a bit--not a millionth part as much as having your love. There, don't let's talk nonsense. Come along." She hurried her companion over a bridge and towards a path roughly made beside the babbling stream which supplied the moat at the Fort, and then in and out among the rocks, and beneath the pensile birches which shed a dappled shade over the path, while every here and there in gardens great clumps of fuchsias and hydrangeas showed the moist warmth of the sheltered nook.