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d had got on the Bryndermere road. I started after them, but missed them for a time, and only came up with them at Landal Water--ah, you don't know where that is; well, it is a great many miles. Of course I had a rest coming back, as I could only drive them slowly." Something in his eyes--the pity, the indignation, the wonder that this exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base uses--shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed in them. "Ah, I see; you are thinking that it is--is not ladylike, that none of your lady-friends would do it if even if they were strong enough?" Stafford would have scorned himself if he had been tempted to evade those beautiful eyes, that sweet, and now rather haughty voice; besides, he was not given to evasion with man or woman. "I wasn't thinking quite that," he said. "But I'll tell you what I was thinking, if you'll promise not to be offended." She considered for a moment, then she said: "I do not think you will offend me. What was it?" "Well, I was thinking that--see here, now, Miss Heron, I've got your promise!--it is not worthy of you--such work, I mean." "Because I'm a girl?" she said, her lip curving with a smile. "No," he said, gravely; "because you are a lady; because you are so--so refined, so graceful, so"--he dared not say "beautiful," and consequently he floundered and broke down. "If you were a farmer's daughter, clumsy and rough and awkward, it would not seem to inappropriate for you to be herding cattle and counting sheep; but--now your promise!--when I come to think that ever since I met you, whenever I think of you I think of--of--a beautiful flower--that now I have seen you in evening-dress, I realise how wrong it is that you should do such work. Oh, dash it! I know it's like my cheek to talk to you like this," he wound up, abruptly and desperately. While he had been speaking, the effect of his words had expressed itself in her eyes and in the alternating colour and pallor of her face. It was the first time in her life any man had told her that she was refined and graceful and flower-like; that she was, so to speak, wasting her sweetness on the desert air, and the speech was both pleasant and painful to her. The long dark lashes swept her cheek; her lips set tightly to repress the quiver which threatened them; but when he had completely broken down,
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