’"Ha!” said Wallace, who is a bird-lover, “a truce to Balzac, and let us watch those nut-hatches!  Miss Bretherton’s quite right to prefer them to French novels.”

’"French novels!” she said, withdrawing her eyes from the branch above her, and frowning a little at Wallace as she spoke.  “Please don’t expect me to talk about them—­I know nothing about them—­I have never wished to.”

’Her voice had a tone almost of hauteur in it.  I have noticed it before.  It is the tone of the famous actress accustomed to believe in herself and her own opinion.  I connected it, too, with all one hears of her determination to look upon herself as charged with a mission for the reform of stage morals.  French novels and French actresses! apparently she regards them all as so many unknown horrors, standing in the way of the purification of dramatic art by a beautiful young person with a high standard of duty.  It is very odd!  Evidently she is the Scotch Presbyterian’s daughter still, for all her profession, and her success, and her easy ways with the Sabbath!  Her remark produced a good deal of unregenerate irritation in me.  If she were a first-rate artist to begin with, I was inclined to reflect, this moral enthusiasm would touch and charm one a good deal more; as it is, considering her position, it is rather putting the cart before the horse.  But, of course, one can understand that it is just these traits in her that help her to make the impression she does on London society and the orthodox public in general.

’Wallace and I went off after the nut-hatches, enjoying a private laugh by the way over Mrs. Stuart’s little look of amazement and discomfort as Miss Bretherton delivered herself.  When we came back we found Forbes sketching her—­she sitting rather flushed and silent under the tree, and he drawing away and working himself at every stroke into a greater and greater enthusiasm.  And certainly she was as beautiful as a dream, sitting against that tree, with the brown heather about her and the young oak-leaves overhead.  But I returned in an antagonistic frame of mind, a little out of patience with her and her beauty, and wondering why Nature always blunders somewhere!

’However, on the way home she had another and a pleasanter surprise for me.  A carriage was waiting for us on the main road, and we strolled towards it through the gorse and the trees and the rich level evening lights.  I dropped behind for some primroses still lingering in bloom beside a little brook; she stayed too, and we were together, out of ear-shot of the rest.

’"Mr. Kendal,” she said, looking straight at me, as I handed the flowers to her, “you may have misunderstood something just now.  I don’t want to pretend to what I haven’t got.  I don’t know French, and I can’t read French novels if I wished to ever so much.”

’What was I to say?  She stood looking at me seriously, a little proudly, having eased her conscience, as it seemed to me, at some cost to herself.  I felt at first inclined to turn the thing off with a jest, but suddenly I thought to myself that I too would speak my mind.