He continued to look at her steadily.  “That isn’t why you won’t have anything to say to me,” he said.

Her colour rose under his gaze, but she would not avoid it.  “Does it matter why?” she said.

“It does when I want to know,” he answered.  Again his look went to her hands.  “How the little brute scored you!  So much for gratitude!”

“You don’t expect gratitude from a creature wild with fright,” said Toby.

She spoke rather breathlessly, and he saw that she was on the verge of tears again.  He got up and drew her to her feet.

“Let’s walk for a bit!” he said.

She stood as one in doubt and he felt that she was trembling.

“I say—­don’t!” he said suddenly and winningly.  “I won’t do anything you don’t like, I swear.  You shan’t be bothered.  Can’t you trust me?”

She made a little movement towards him, and he put his arm round her shoulders.  They turned along the greensward side by side.

“It was awfully nice of you to come,” Bunny said in that new gentle voice of his.  “I didn’t mean you to get there first, but old Bishop is so long-winded I couldn’t get away.”

“It didn’t matter,” said Toby with a nervous little smile.

“It did to me,” said Bunny.  “It would have saved you that anyway.”

“But you’d have killed the hare,” she said.

“Not if he hadn’t been damaged,” he said.  “I’m not a brute.  I don’t kill for the sake of killing.”

She looked incredulous.  “Most men do.  Don’t you hunt?  Don’t you shoot?”

“Oh, you’re talking of sport!” said Bunny.

“Yes, it’s called sport,” said Toby, an odd little vibration in her voice.  “It’s just a name for killing things, isn’t it?”

Bunny considered the matter.  “No, that’s not fair,” he decided.  “Sport is sport.  But I prefer to walk up my game and I never countenance digging out a fox.  That’s sport.”

“There are very few sportsmen in the world,” said Toby.

“Oh, I don’t know.  Anyway, I hope I’m one of ’em.  I try to be,” said Bunny.

She gave him a quick look.  “I think you are.  And so is Jake.”

“Oh, Jake!  Jake’s magnificent.  He’s taught me all I know in that line.  I used to be a horrid little bounder before I met Jake.  He simply made me—­body and soul.”  Bunny spoke with a simple candour.

“P’raps he had good stuff to work on,” suggested Toby.

Bunny’s arm drew her almost imperceptibly.  “I don’t think he had.  My father was a wild Irishman, and my mother—­well, she’s dead too—­but she wasn’t anything to be specially proud of.”

“Oh, was your mother a rotter?” said Toby, with sudden interest.

He nodded.  “We don’t talk about her much, Maud and I. She married a second time—­a brute of a man who used to run the Anchor Hotel.  They went to Canada, and she died.”

“The Anchor Hotel!” said Toby.  “That place at Fairharbour down by the shore?”