She still thought that a time would come when it would be
otherwise. Under these influences she had actually made herself believe
that she was sighing for the country, and for solitude; for the wide
expanse of her own bright waves--as she had called them--and for the rocks
of dear Portray. She had told Miss Macnulty and Augusta Fawn that she
thirsted for the breezes of Ayrshire, so that she might return to her
books and her thoughts. Amid the whirl of London it was impossible either
to read or to think. And she believed it too herself. She so believed it
that on the first morning of her arrival she took a little volume in her
pocket, containing Shelley's "Queen Mab," and essayed to go down upon the
rocks. She had actually breakfasted at nine, and was out on the sloping
grounds below the castle before ten, having made some boast to Miss
Macnulty about the morning air.
She scrambled down, not very far down, but a little way beneath the garden
gate, to a spot on which a knob of rock cropped out from the scanty
herbage of the incipient cliff. Fifty yards lower the real rocks began;
and, though the real rocks were not very rocky, not precipitous or even
bold, and were partially covered with salt-fed mosses down almost to the
sea, nevertheless they justified her in talking about her rock-bound
shore.
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