"Very well, then, tell mamma so, will you?" replied the young lady, turning off in the direction indicated. The message caused the elder ladies to stop; Mrs. Peters looked very much as if she did not like her share in the division, but, after a moment's hesitation, she good-humouredly nodded assent, and walked on, Elizabeth, (who in her heart believed Mrs. Barnaby was the kindest person in the world, because she said so,) joining the elder ladies, and the four others striking off towards the beautiful rising ground on the right. There is a sort of free-masonry among young people which is never brought into action till the elders are out of the way, and it was probably for this reason that Agnes felt better acquainted with her companions, before they had pursued their walk for half an hour, than all the talk of the preceding evening, or that of the breakfast-table, had enabled her to become. Something, too, might have been effected in the way of familiarity by an accident arising from the nature of the scenery upon which they paused to gaze. On reaching the windmill, and looking down upon the course of the Avon, winding its snake-like path at their feet, with the woods of Leigh, rich in their midsummer foliage, feathering down on one side, and rocks of limestone, bright in their veins of red and grey, freshly opened by the quarrying, rising beautifully bold on the other, Agnes stood wrapt in ecstasy. All she had yet seen of Nature had been the flowery meads and blooming apple orchards of the least romantic part of Devonshire; and though there was beauty enough in this to awaken that love of landscape which is always one of the strongest feelings in a finely-organized mind, she was quite unprepared for the sort of emotion the scene she now beheld occasioned her. She pressed forward before her companions, and, utterly unmindful of danger, leaned over the verge of the giddy precipice, till young Peters, really alarmed, seized her by the arm and drew her back again. Tears were in her eyes, and her face was as pale as marble. "My dear Miss Willoughby!" said Mary, kindly, "the precipice has made you giddy, ... I do believe, if James had not seized you, that you would have fallen!" "Oh! no, no," replied Agnes, shaking her head, while a bright flush instantly chased the paleness, "I do assure you I was not in any danger at all ... only I never saw anything so beautiful before." "Let us sit down," said Lucy. "There is no dampness whatever. It is almost the first day of real summer, and the air is delicious. Is it not beautiful here, Agnes?"