"The result of cursed conventionality, I call it. The stronger the hate, too often, the brighter and softer is the smile that conceals it. _Maladette_! 'Tis not so in some of the sunny lands where I have been, and where a little homicide, now and then, is considered but a casual occurrence." The captain was in what Morley and Mr. Basset were wont to term one of his "bitter and bouncing moods"--moods which rather amused them; so as this was scarcely a moment in which to proffer the ring, Morley lit another cigar, and to put off the time until he could meet Ethel, strolled on till they reached the summit of the cliffs, from whence could be seen the far extent of the dark blue sea, that stretched away to the south-west, with the sails that dotted it, shining red, rather than white, in the ruddy light of the setting sun. There, too, was visible the smoke of more than one steamer, rolling far astern, like a long and fading pennant on the sky. So the rivals continued to ramble on in no very companionable mood, for Morley was happy and abstracted, while Hawkshaw was bitter and quarrelsome, till the deep hoarse booming of the breakers announced that they were close to Acton Chine, towards which, as if by silent and tacit consent, they proceeded. The evening was lovely, and its calm beauty increased as the sun set and twilight stole on. With the shrill practical whistle of an occasional locomotive on the London and North-Western line, there came on the breath of the soft west wind the more poetical tinkling of the waggon-bells from the dusty highway, in the green vale far down below; and now, though the placid air rang joyously, the evening chime from the broad, low Norman spire of Acton church, the solid outline of which stood defined and dark against the flush of the saffron sky beyond. And with the breeze that wafted the sound came the fragrant perfume of the ripening fields, their warmth and fertility, as if it had stolen "o'er a bed of violets." Sunk in deepening shadow now, green Acton Chase, with all its great oaks blending in a mass, stretched far away in the distance to the foot of the uplands. Acton Chine--the reader may perhaps have seen it--is a seam or chasm in the rocks, rising to the height of four hundred feet or more, sheer from the sea, whose waves for ever roar, toil, and boil in snow-white foam against its base. Standing where Morley and Hawkshaw did, on the evening in question, one might say with Edgar, but perhaps more truly than he did of Dover: "How fearful And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air, Show scarce so large as beetles * * * The murmuring surge, That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong."