showing
ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her
shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and
strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight
black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth--a face whose beauty bore
the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild
sweetness, as of a flower growing in some lonely and inaccessible
place. None of the Rexton girls looked like that. Who, in the name of
all that was amazing, could she be?

As the thought crossed Alan's mind the girl turned, with an air of
indifference that might have seemed slightly overdone to a calmer
observer than was the young minister at that moment and, with a
gesture of command to her dogs, walked quickly away into the scrub
spruces. She was so tall that her uncovered head was visible over them
as she followed some winding footpath, and Alan stood like a man
rooted to the ground until he saw her enter the grey house. Then he
went homeward in a maze, all thought of sermons, doctrinal or
otherwise, for the moment knocked out of his head.

She is the most beautiful woman I ever saw, he thought. How is it
possible that I have lived in Rexton for six months and never heard of
her or of that house? Well, I daresay there's some simple explanation
of it all. The place may have been unoccupied until lately--probably
it is the summer residence of people who have only recently come to
it. I'll ask Mrs. Danby. She'll know if anybody will. That good woman
knows everything about everybody in Rexton for three generations back.

Alan found Isabel King with his housekeeper when he got home. His
greeting was tinged with a slight constraint. He was not a vain man,
but he could not help knowing that Isabel looked upon him with a
favour that had in it much more than professional interest. Isabel
herself showed it with sufficient distinctness. Moreover, he felt a
certain personal dislike of her and of her hard, insistent beauty,
which seemed harder and more insistent than ever contrasted with his
recollection of the girl of the lake shore.

Isabel had a trick of coming to the manse on plausible errands to Mrs.
Danby and lingering until it was so dark that Alan was in courtesy
bound to see her home. The ruse was a little too patent and amused
Alan, although he carefully hid his amusement and treated Isabel with
the fine unvarying deference which his mother had engrained into him
for womanho