tears glistened in its track.  “If you ever hear such a thing said again you can say it’s a horrid lie!” I had brought on a commotion deeper than any I was prepared for; but it was explained in some degree by the next words she uttered:  “I’m happy to say there’s nothing the matter with any part of me whatever, not the least little thing!” She spoke with her habitual complacency, with triumphant assurance; she smiled again, and I could see how she wished that she hadn’t so taken me up.  She turned it off with a laugh.  “I’ve good eyes, good teeth, a good digestion and a good temper.  I’m sound of wind and limb!” Nothing could have been more characteristic than her blush and her tears, nothing less acceptable to her than to be thought not perfect in every particular.  She couldn’t submit to the imputation of a flaw.  I expressed my delight in what she told me, assuring her I should always do battle for her; and as if to rejoin her companions she got up from her place on my mother’s toes.  The young men presented their backs to us; they were leaning on the rail of the cliff.  Our incident had produced a certain awkwardness, and while I was thinking of what next to say she exclaimed irrelevantly:  “Don’t you know?  He’ll be Lord Considine.”  At that moment the youth marked for this high destiny turned round, and she spoke to my mother.  “I’ll introduce him to you—­he’s awfully nice.”  She beckoned and invited him with her parasol; the movement struck me as taking everything for granted.  I had heard of Lord Considine and if I had not been able to place Lord Iffield it was because I didn’t know the name of his eldest son.  The young man took no notice of Miss Saunt’s appeal; he only stared a moment and then on her repeating it quietly turned his back.  She was an odd creature:  she didn’t blush at this; she only said to my mother apologetically, but with the frankest sweetest amusement, “You don’t mind, do you?  He’s a monster of shyness!” It was as if she were sorry for every one—­for Lord Iffield, the victim of a complaint so painful, and for my mother, the subject of a certain slight.  “I’m sure I don’t want him!” said my mother, but Flora added some promise of how she would handle him for his rudeness.  She would clearly never explain anything by any failure of her own appeal.  There rolled over me while she took leave of us and floated back to her friends a wave of superstitious dread.  I seemed somehow to see her go forth to her fate, and yet what should fill out this orb of a high destiny if not such beauty and such joy?  I had a dim idea that Lord Considine was a great proprietor, and though there mingled with it a faint impression that I shouldn’t like his son the result of the two images was a whimsical prayer that the girl mightn’t miss her possible fortune.

CHAPTER IV