“She told you?” cried Peter.

“But she didn’t say you’d asked her,” cried Sarah, scornfully. “I knew it, but she never guessed I did.  She was only gently smoothing away, as she hoped, the difficulties that lay in the path to your happiness.  Oh, that she could have believed it of me!  But she thinks only of your happiness. You, who would snatch away hers this minute if you could.  She never dreamt I knew you’d said a word.”

She paused in her impassioned speech, and the tears dropped from the dark blue eyes.  Sarah was crying, and Peter was speechless with awe and dismay.

“I think she would have died, Peter,” said Sarah, solemnly, “before she would have told me how brutal you’d been, and how stupid, and how selfish.  I meant you to show her all that.  I thought it would open her eyes.  I was such a fool!  As if anything could open the eyes of a mother to the faults of her only son.”

Peter looked at her with such despair and grief in his dark face that her heart almost softened towards him; but she hardened it again immediately.

“Do you mean that you—­you’ve been playing with me all this time, Sarah?  They—­everybody told me—­that you were only playing—­but I’ve never believed it.”

“I meant to play with you,” said Sarah, turning, if possible, even redder than before; “I meant to teach you a lesson, and throw you over.  And the more I saw of you, the more I didn’t repent.  You, who dared to think yourself superior to your mother; and, indeed, to any woman!  Kings are enslaved by women, you know,” said Miss Sarah, tossing her head, “and statesmen are led by them, though they oughtn’t to be.  And—­and poets worship them, or how could they write poetry?  There would be nothing to write about.  It is reserved for boys and savages to look down upon them.”

She sat scornfully down again on her boulder, and put her hands to her loosened hair.

“I can’t think why a scene always makes one’s hair untidy,” said Sarah, suddenly bursting into a laugh; but the whiteness of Peter’s face frightened her, and she had some ado to laugh naturally.  “And I am lost without a looking-glass,” she added, in a somewhat quavering tone of bravado.

She pulled out a great tortoise-shell dagger, and a heavy mass of glorious red-gold hair fell about her piquant face, and her pretty milk-white throat, down to her waist.

“Dear me!” said Miss Sarah.  She looked around.  Near the bubbling brook, dark peaty hollows held little pools, which offered Nature’s mirror for her toilet.

She went to the side of the stream and knelt down.  Her plump white hands dexterously twisted and secured the long burnished coil.  Then she glanced slyly round at Peter.

He lay face downwards on the grass.  His shoulders heaved.  The pretty picture Miss Sarah’s coquetry presented had been lost upon the foolish youth.

She returned in a leisurely manner to her place, and leaning her chin on her hand, and her elbow on her knee, regarded him thoughtfully.