Emerald-green meadows alternately with a few cornfields decked the gentle billowy uplands, which sloped away abruptly toward the sea.

Trees stood separately or in groups reaching to the edge of the cliff, over which many of them bent their storm-disheveled heads and gazed into the waves below.

Here and there were small inclosed woods, and it was at the edge of one of these, about a quarter of a mile walk from the town, that the countess seated herself on a mossy bank in the shade.

Wilhelm sat down beside her on the gnarled root of a tree; Anne was sent home, to return in two hours' time, but Fido was allowed to remain.

He was a silvery-white sheepdog with a sharp muzzle, stiff little pointed ears, and a bushy tail curling tightly over his back.