had been absurd. The
next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected
a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim
steadiness.

"Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner.

He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small
pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket. Suddenly he
stopped, as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any
change of his glum look.

"Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought
to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that
unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself."

A pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took
back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a
certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused.

"Yes," she said. "You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan."

He slightly shrugged his big shoulders.

"Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with
a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood
and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby
corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his
ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted
Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment."

"I am not embarrassed," said Bettina.

"That is what I like," gruffly.

"I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it."

Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark
passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither
of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly
frowned.

"I beg pardon," he said. "You are quite right. It had a deucedly
patronising sound."

As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she
had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His
red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features
were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight
of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have
wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their
way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a
coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters.

"I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on. "I h