fly on to the water.
"But we can't afford to waste a moment of shadow. I have done nothing
all day on account of the sunlight."

And now the welcome shade was over, and, after a preliminary cast or two
to get the line out, she was sending her fly well across, and letting it
drift quietly down the stream, to be recovered by a series of small and
gentle jerks. Lionel was supposed to be looking on at the fishing; but,
when he dared, he was stealing covert glances at her; for this was one
of the most striking faces he had seen for many a day. There was a
curiously pronounced personality about her features, refined as they
were; her lips were proud--and perhaps a little firmer than usual just
now, when she was wielding a seventeen-foot rod; her clear hazel eyes
were absolutely fearless; and her broadly marked and somewhat square
eyebrows appeared to lend strength rather than gentleness to the
intellectual forehead. Then the stateliness of her neck and the set of
her head; she seemed to recall to him some proud warrior-maiden out of
Scandinavian mythology--though she was dressed in simple homespun and
had for her only henchman this quiet old Robert, who, crouching down
under a birch-tree, was watching every cast made by his mistress with
the intensest interest. And at last Lionel was startled to hear the old
man call out, but in an undertone--"Ho!"

Honnor Cunyngham began coolly to pull in her line through the rings.

"What is it?" Lionel asked, in wonder.

"I rose a fish then, but he came short," she said, quietly. "We'll give
him a rest. A pretty good one, wasn't he, Robert?"

"Ay, he wass that, Miss Honnor, a good fish. And ye did not touch him?"

"Not at all; he'll come again sure enough."

And then she turned to Lionel? and he was pleased to observe, as she
went on to speak to him about her sisters-in-law and their various
pursuits, that, proud as those lips were, a sort of grave good-humor
seemed to be their habitual expression, and also that those
transparently honest, hazel eyes had a very attractive sunniness in them
when she was amused.

"The dressmaking," she said. "Of course you know what that is about.
They are preparing another of those out-of-door performances. Oh, yes,
they are very much in earnest," she went on, with a smile that lightened
and sweetened the pronounced character of her face.

"And you are to be entertained this time. They are not going to ask you
to do anything. Last time, at Campde