owards him, Richard Calmady looked full at her. His head
was carried somewhat high too. His face was very still. His eyes--with
those curiously small pupils to them--were very observant, in effect
hiding rather than revealing his thought. His manner, as he held out
his hand to her, was courteous, even friendly, and yet, notwithstanding
her high and fearless spirit, Honoria--for the first time in her life
probably--felt afraid. And then she began to understand how it came
about that, whether he behaved well or ill, whether he was good or bad,
cruel or kind, seen or unseen even, Richard, of necessity, could not
but occupy a good deal of space in the lives of all persons brought
into close contact with him. For she recognised in him a rather
tremendous creature, self-contained, not easily accessible, possessed
of a larger portion than most men of energy and resolution, possessed
too--and this, as she thought of it, again turned her a trifle sick--of
an unusual capacity of suffering.

"I am ashamed of being so dreadfully late," she said as she slipped
into the vacant place on his left.--Godfrey Ormiston was beyond her,
next to Julius March.--Honoria was aware that her voice sounded
slightly unsteady, in part from her recent scamper, in part from a
queer emotion which seemed to clutch at her throat.--"But we walked
home over the fields and by the Warren, and just in that boggy bit
where you cross the Welsh-road, Godfrey found the slot of a red-deer in
the snow, and naturally we both had to follow it up."

"Naturally," Richard said.

"I'm not so sure it was a red-deer, Honoria," the boy broke in.

"Oh yes, it was," she declared as she helped herself to a cutlet. "It
couldn't have been anything else."

"Why not?" Richard asked. He was interested by the tone of assurance in
which she spoke.

"Oh, well, the tracks were too big for a fallow-deer to begin with. And
then there's a difference, you can't mistake it if you've ever compared
the two, in the cleft of the hoof."

"And you have compared the two?"

"Oh, certainly," Honoria answered.--She was beginning to recover her
nonchalance of manner and indolent slowness of speech. "I lose no
opportunity of acquiring odds and ends of information. One never knows
when they may come in handy."

She looked at him as she spoke, and her upper lip shortened and her
eyes narrowed into a delightful smile--a smile, moreover, which had the
faintest trace of an asking of pardon in it.