to become a " view " pure and simple, a view of
great extent and beauty, but thrown forward and
vertiginous. Milly, with the promise of it from just
above, had gone straight down to it, not stopping
till it was all before her; and here, on what struck
her friend as the dizzy edge of it, she was seated
at her ease. The path somehow took care of itself
and its final business, but the girl's seat was a slab
of rock at the end of a short promontory or ex
crescence that merely pointed off to the right into
gulfs of air and that was so placed by good for
tune, if not by the worst, as to be at last completely
visible. For Mrs. Stringham stifled a cry on taking
in what she believed to be the danger of such a
perch for a mere maiden; her liability to slip, to
slide, to leap, to be precipitated by a single false
movement, by a turn of the head how could one
tell? into whatever was beneath. A thousand
thoughts, for the minute, roared in the poor lady's
ears, but without reaching, as happened, Milly s. It
was a commotion that left our observer intensely
still and holding her breath. What had first been
offered her was the possibility of a latent intention
however wild the idea in such a posture; of
some betrayed accordance of Milly's caprice with
a horrible hidden obsession. But since Mrs. String-
ham stood as motionless as if a sound, a syllable,
must have produced the start that would be fatal,
so even the lapse of a few seconds had a partly
reassuring effect. It gave her time to receive the

[[138]]

p137 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p138w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p139

v?