“Yes,” said Bressant, following her down the glistening granite steps with an air of half-puzzled admiration.  He liked his new sensations very much, but knew not what to make of them; and so had a sense of adventurous uncertainty, which was perhaps a pleasure in itself.

Cornelia walked down the path in front of him, picking her dainty steps to avoid stray spears of grass or weeds, and gathering up her light skirts in one hand, out of the way of the bushes which leaned lovingly forward to drop a tear upon her.  At length she reached the tea-rose bush, and paused there.  Bressant came up and stood beside her.

It was just dark enough to make the difference between a perfect and an imperfect bud a matter of some doubt.  Cornelia peeped cautiously about, putting aside the wet twigs gingerly, and lifting up one flower after another; desisting every once in a while to slap at the fine sting of a mosquito on her arms or neck.

“Oh! there’s one that looks nice!” exclaimed she, disposing her drapery to reach across the bush for a distant bud which looked in every respect satisfactory.  But Bressant saw it, and plucked it without effort, drawing blood from his finger as he did so, however.  He smelt it, and looked from it to Cornelia, apparently trying to identify an idea.

“Aren’t you going to give me my bud?” demanded Miss Valeyon.  “What’s the matter, sir?”

“In some way it reminds me of you,” replied he, giving it to her with a shake of the head.  “I don’t see how, but it does!”

Cornelia gave him a sharp side-look, to make out if he was sincere; but his face at the moment was in shadow.

“Perhaps because it pricked your finger,” said she.

She had not spoken loud, and was almost startled when his reply showed he had heard her.  There was again that expression of marvellous efficiency and power in his face and bearing, but combined with one partly doubt and partly shrewd scrutiny.

“I plucked the bud all the same,” he remarked.  Cornelia, for some reason, felt a little provoked and a little frightened.  He wasn’t entirely unsophisticated after all; and she felt quite uncertain where the ignorance ended and the knowledge began.  She put the bud in her hair, and they walked on, Bressant being now at her side, instead of behind.  The path was hardly wide enough for two, and now and then she felt her shoulder touch his arm.  Every time this happened, she fancied her companion gave a kind of involuntary start, and looked around at her with a quick, inquiring expression—­fancied, for she did not meet his look, being herself conscious of a sort of irregularity of the breath and pulse attending these contacts, which she could not understand, and did not feel altogether at ease about.  Certainly, there was something odd in this Bressant!  Cornelia hardly knew whether he strongly repelled or powerfully attracted her.  She had half a mind to run back to the house.