“You are quite a heroine, Miss Hunsden, and a wonderful traveler for a seventeen-year-old young lady.  You see, I know your age; but at seventeen a young lady does not mind, I believe.  How long have you been in England this time?”

He spoke with careless adroitness; Miss Hunsden answered, frankly enough: 

“Five months.  You were abroad, I think, at the time.”

“Yes.  And now you have come for good, I hope—­as if Miss Hunsden could come for anything else.”

“It all depends on papa’s health,” replied Harriet, quietly ignoring the compliment.  “I should like to stay, I confess.  I am very, very fond of England.”

“Of course—­as you should be of your native place.”  He was firing nearer the target.

“England is not my native place,” said Harriet, calmly.  “I was born at Gibraltar.”

“At Gibraltar!  You surprise me.  Of course your mother was not a native of Gibraltar?”

“Of course not.  My mother was an American—­born and bred and married in New York.”

“I suppose you scarcely remember her?”

“Scarcely,” the young lady repeated, dryly; “since I never saw her.”

“Indeed!  She died then—­”

“At my birth—­yes.  And now, Sir Everard”—­the bright, clear eyes flashed suddenly full upon him—­“is the catechism almost at an end?”

He absolutely recoiled.  If ever guilt was written on a human face, it was readily written on his.

“Ah!” Miss Hunsden said, scornfully, “you thought I couldn’t find you out—­you thought I couldn’t see your drift.  Have a better opinion of my powers of penetration next time, Sir Everard.  My poor father, impoverished in purse, broken in health, sensitive in spirit, chooses to hide his wounds—­chooses not to wear his heart on his sleeve for the Devonshire daws to peck at—­chooses never to speak of his lost wife—­and, lo! all the gossips of the country are agape for the news.  She was an actress, was she not, Sir Everard?  And when I ride across the country, at the heels of the hounds, it is only the spangles, and glitter, and theater glare breaking out again.  I could despise it in others, but I did think better things of the son of my father’s oldest friend!  Good-morning, Sir Everard.”

She turned proudly away.

“Stay, Harriet—­Miss Hunsden!  Stop—­for pity’s sake, stop and hear me!  I have been presuming—­impertinent.  I have deserved your rebuke.”

“You have,” she said, haughtily.

“But I asked those questions because the nameless insinuations I heard drove me mad—­because I love you, I worship you, with all my heart and soul.”

Like an impetuous torrent the words burst out.  He actually flung himself on his knees before her.

“My beautiful, queenly, glorious Harriet!  I love you as man never loved woman before!”

Miss Hunsden stood aghast, staring, absolutely confounded.  For one instant she stood thus; then all was forgotten in her sense of the ludicrous.  She leaned against a tree, and set up a shout of laughter long and clear.