I stood by the wooden pillars of the wide piazza and watched the stars
come out. Presently a door opened and the Countess appeared. She had a
black shawl of soft lace about her head, which came round her shoulders
and outlined her figure.

I knew that this must be that mantilla of Spain of which I had read, and
which I had been led to conceive of as a clumsy and beauty-concealing
garment, like the _yashmak_ of the Turks. But the goodliness of the
picture was such that in my own country I had never seen green nor grey
which set any maid one-half so well.

"Let us walk by the lake," she said, "and listen to the night."

So quite naturally I offered her my arm, and she took it as though it
were a nothing hardly to be perceived. Yet in Galloway of the hills it
would have taken me weeks even to conceive myself offering an arm to a
beautiful woman. Here such things were in the air. Nevertheless was my
heart beating wildly within me, like a bird's wings that must perforce
pulsate faster in a rarer atmosphere. So I held my arm a little wide of
my side lest she should feel my heart throbbing. Foolish youth! As
though any woman does not know, most of all one who is beautiful. So
there on my arm, light and white as the dropped feather of an angel's
wing, her hand rested. It was bare, and a diamond shone upon it.

The lake was a steel-grey mirror where it took the light of the sky.
But in the shadows it was dark as night. The evening was very still, and
only the Thal wind drew upward largely and contentedly.

"Tell me of yourself!" she said, as soon as we had passed from under the
shelter of the hotel.

I hesitated, for indeed it seemed a strange thing to speak to so great a
lady concerning the little moorland home, of my mother, and all the
simple people out there upon the hills of sheep.

The Countess looked up at me, and I saw a light shine in the depths of
her eyes.

"You have a mother--tell me of her!" she said.

So I told her in simple words a tale which I had spoken of to no one
before--of slights and scorns, for she was a woman, and understood. It
came into my mind as I spoke that as soon as I had finished she would
leave me; and I slackened my arm that she might the more easily withdraw
her hand. But yet I spoke on faithfully, hiding nothing. I told of our
poverty, of the struggle with the hill-farm and the backward seasons, of
my mother who looked over the moorland with sweet tired eyes as for some
one that