“Gerty wants to be a Mrs. Siddons:  that’s it,” said Miss Carry, promptly.

Talking to an actress about her profession, and not having a word of compliment to say?  Instead, he praised the noble elms and chestnuts of the Park, the broad white lake, the flowers, the avenues.  He was greatly interested by the whizzing by overhead of a brace of duck.

“I suppose you are very fond of animals?” Miss White said.

“I am indeed,” said he, suddenly brightening up.  “And up at our place I give them all a chance.  I don’t allow a single weasel or hawk to be killed, though I have a great deal of trouble about it.  But what is the result?  I don’t know whether there is such a thing as the balance of nature, or whether it is merely that the hawks and weasels and other vermin kill off the sickly birds:  but I do know that we have less disease among our birds than I hear of anywhere else.  I have sometimes shot a weasel, it is true, when I have run across him as he was hunting a rabbit—­you cannot help doing that if you hear the rabbit squealing with fright long before the weasel is at him—­but it is against my rule.  I give them all a fair field and no favor.  But there are two animals I put out of the list; I thought there was only one till this week—­now there are two; and one of them I hate, the other I fear.”

“Fear?” she said:  the slight flash of surprise in her eyes was eloquent enough.  But he did not notice it.

“Yes,” said he, rather gloomily.  “I suppose it is superstition, or you may have it in your blood; but the horror I have of the eyes of a snake—­I cannot tell you of it.  Perhaps I was frightened when I was a child—­I cannot remember; or perhaps it was the stories of the old women.  The serpent is very mysterious to the people in the Highlands:  they have stories of watersnakes in the lochs:  and if you get a nest of seven adders with one white one, you boil the white one, and the man who drinks the broth knows all things in heaven and earth.  In the Lewis they call the serpent righinn, that is, ‘a princess;’ and they say that the serpent is a princess bewitched.  But that is from fear—­it is a compliment—­”

“But surely there are no serpents to be afraid of in the Highlands?” said Miss White.  She was looking rather curiously at him.

“No,” said he, in the same gloomy way.  “The adders run away from you if you are walking through the heather.  If you tread on one, and he bites your boot, what then?  He cannot hurt you.  But suppose you are out after the deer, and you are crawling along the heather with your face to the ground, and all at once you see the two small eyes of an adder looking at you and close to you—­”

He shuddered slightly—­perhaps it was only an expression of disgust.