“Yes, just four weeks to-morrow. I remember because ... never mind why.... But you have not really answered me.” He recaptured her hand and pressed it. “Do, ‘Gamin,’ do, please say something encouraging!” he murmured, almost in her ear, and quite unconsciously drawing her toward him. Her graceful body stiffened, and almost immediately relaxed again. The hand in his was trembling a very little. “I think you would make a very nice husband,” she said, innocently, not in the least aware of what she was saying. A quick smile lighted up Basil’s eyes. “You dear child!” he whispered. “You little darling!” Marguerite sat quite still waiting--waiting for she knew not what; her heart beating so fast that she became afraid he might hear it. Fortunately more gulls were swooping up from below the giddy brink, and the surge of their wings made this improbable. “Then you would not laugh at me if I were to ask you to--” He paused, searching for the exact words he wanted, and Marguerite, her lips slightly apart, listened a trifle breathlessly. “To help me?” he concluded with unexpected force. “Help you? How? What do you mean, Cousin Basil?” She was desperately trying to conquer some unexplainable emotion. “You see, I don’t like to ask your father. He would begin by making fun of me!” “Fun of _you_!” “Oh, without a doubt! You know him, Marguerite.” He had never called her Marguerite before, and she wondered why he did so now. “He is barely four years older than I am, you understand, and....” “What does that matter?” she interrupted, with a happy little smile. “He--” She checked herself and hastily altered the sentence to a “He likes you very much, you know!” which was extraordinarily meaningless. “And do you like me very much, too?” Basil asked, looking straight ahead in the eye of the wind. It was a pity he could not see her smile now, or the expression that accompanied the light casualness of her reply, for both were revealing. “Yes; very much, Cousin Basil.” “I know you do, my dear little ‘Gamin,’ and that is what emboldened me to ask your advice just now.” He was still gazing out to sea, wrapped in his own thought, while she waited, a faint tingling in her finger-tips warning her that her patience was really being tried. She moved restlessly once or twice, until finally one slender fawn-suède-shod foot hung directly over the knife-like edge of the cliff. In the offing a fleet of fishing-boats that from that height resembled a mere flight of red-and-white butterflies, were drowsily drifting under slack sails toward the harbor of Kastèllék, behind the crag where still sat enthroned the contemplative eagle.