those of the
black-browed girl, at whom he gazed for idle satisfaction of eye from
time to time while she replied demurely and maintained her drama of, the
featureless but well-distinguished actors within her bosom,--a round,
plump bust, good wharfage and harbourage, he was thinking. Excellent
harbourage, supposing the arms out in pure good-will. A girl to hold her
voyager fast and safe! Men of her class had really a capital choice in a
girl like this. Men of another class as well, possibly, for temporary
anchorage out midchannel. No?--possibly not. Here and there a girl is a
Tartar. Ines talked of her as if she were a kind of religious edifice and
a doubt were sacrilege. She could impress the rascal: girls have their
arts for reaching the holy end, and still they may have a welcome for a
foreign ship.

The earl said humorously: 'You will grant me permission to lunch at your
mistress's table in her absence?' And she said: 'My lord!' And he
resumed, to waken her interest with a personal question: 'You like our
quiet country round Esslemont?' She said: 'I do,' and gave him plain look
for look. Her eye was undefended: he went into it, finding neither
shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look; whereby he knew that
no story of man was there, and not the shyest of remote responsive
invitations from Nature's wakened and detected rogue. The bed of an
unmarried young woman's eye yields her secret of past and present to the
intrepid diver, if he can get his plunge; he holds her for the tenth of a
minute, that is the revealment. Jewel or oyster-shell, it is ours. She
cannot withhold it, he knew right well. This girl, then, was, he could
believe, one of the rarely exampled innocent in knowledge. He was
practised to judge.

Invitation or challenge or response from the handsomest he would have
scorned just then. His native devilry suffered a stir at sight of an
innocent in knowledge and spotless after experiences. By a sudden
singular twist, rather unfairly, naturally, as it happened, he attributed
it to an influence issuing from her mistress, to whom the girl was
devoted, whom consequently she copied; might physically, and also
morally, at a distance, resemble.

'Well, you've been a faithful servant to your lady, my dear; I hope
you'll be comfortable here,' he said. 'She likes the mountains.'

'My lady would be quite contented if she could pass two months of the
year in the mountains,' Madge answered.

'Look at me. T