“Did you?” she said, looking round in her eagerness.

He hesitated an instant, and then answered,

“Did you?”

Elizabeth had no words.  Her face sought the shelter of her sunbonnet again, and she almost felt as if she would have liked to seek the shelter of the earth bodily, by diving down into it.  Her brain was swimming.  There was a rush of thoughts and ideas, a train of scattered causes and consequences, which then she had no power to set in order; but the rush almost overwhelmed her, and what was wanting, shame added.  She was vexed with herself for her jealousy in divining and her impatience in asking foolish questions; and in her vexation was ready to be vexed with Winthrop, —­ if she only knew how.  She longed to lay her head down in her hands, but pride kept it up.  She rested her chin on one hand and wondered when Winthrop would speak again, —­ she could not, —­ and what he would say; gazing at the blue bit of water and gay mountain-side, and thinking that she was not giving him a particularly favourable specimen of herself that morning, and vexed out of measure to think it.

Then upon this, a very quietly spoken “Elizabeth!” —­ came to her ear.  It was the first time Winthrop had called her so; but that was not all.  Quietly spoken as it was, there was not only a little inquiry, there was a little amusement and a little admonition, in the tone.  It stirred Elizabeth to her spirit’s depths, but with several feelings; and for the life of her she could not have spoken.

“What is the reason you should hide your face so carefully from me?” he went on presently, much in the same tone.  “Mine is open to you —­ it isn’t fair play.”

Elizabeth could have laughed if she had not been afraid of crying.  She kept herself hid in her sunbonnet and made no reply.

“Suppose you take that thing off, and let me look at you.”

“It shades my face from the sun.”

“The cedar trees will do that for you.”

“No —­ they wouldn’t.”

And she kept her face steadily fixed upon the opposite shore, only brought straight before her now; thinking to herself that she would carry this point at any rate.  But in another minute she was somewhat astounded to find Winthrop’s left hand, he was supporting himself carelessly on his right, quietly, very quietly, untying her sunbonnet strings; and then rousing himself, with the other hand he lifted the bonnet from her head.  It gave a full view then of hair in very nice order and a face not quite so; for the colour had now flushed to her very temples with more feelings than one, and her eye was downcast, not caring to shew its revelations.  She knew that Winthrop took an observation of all, to his heart’s content; but she could not look at him for an instant.  Then without saying anything, he got up and went off to a little distance where he made himself busy among some of the bushes and vines which were gay with the fall colouring Elizabeth sat drooping her head on her knees, for she could not absolutely hold it up.  She looked at her sunbonnet lying on the bank beside her; but it is not an improper use of language to say that she dared not put it on.