g
towards your own relations--unless indeed, as in the case of Tom, they
had given you ample cause--would be surely the mark of a small and
narrow mind.

And he might be a miner; and mines, and most miners, were naturally
hateful to her. But he had been a sailor, and was miner only by accident
as it were, and she knew that he loved the sea. Allowance, she supposed,
must be made for men getting twists in their brains--like her father. He
had gone crazy over these mines though he had been sensible enough in
other matters.

What her careful, surreptitious observation of him, from the depths and
round the wings of her sun-bonnet, told her was that he was an upright
man, and true, and bold, with a spirit which he kept well in hand but
which could blaze like lightning on occasion, and a strength which he
could turn to excellent purpose when the need arose.

And--and--she admitted it shyly to herself and not without wonder, and
found herself dwelling upon it as she sang softly to the ping-pang of
the milk into the pail, or the swoosh of it in the churn--he thought of
her, Nance Hamon--perhaps he even admired her a little--any way he was
certainly interested in her, and in his shy reserved way he showed a
desire for her company which she no longer found pleasure in defeating
as she had done at first.

Undoubtedly an odd feeling, this, of being cared for by an outside
man--- but withal tending to increase of self-esteem and therefore not
unpleasing.

Peter Mauger, indeed--but then she had never looked upon Peter as
anything but Peter, and the shadow of Tom had always obscured him to
her. Stephen Gard was a man, and a different kind of a man from Peter
altogether.

She remembered, with a slight reddening still of the warm brown cheeks
whenever she thought of it--how, on the previous Sunday afternoon, she
and Bernel had gone running over the downs through the waist-high
bracken towards Breniere, the tide in their favourite pool below the
rocks being too high for bathing. And on the slope above the Cromlech
they had come suddenly on Gard, lying there looking out over the sea
towards L'Etat.

He had jumped up at sight of them and stood hesitating a moment.

"Going for a bathe?" he asked, knowing the usual course of their
proceedings.

"Yes, we were," said Bernel. "You going?" with a glance at the towel
Gard had brought out on the chance of a dip.

"I'd thought of it, but your tides and currents here are so
troublesome