At last she looked up at me again, suddenly, as though to surprise my secret reflections; and if she did so I do not know, for she smiled and held out her hand to me with so pretty a confidence that my lips trembled as I pressed them to her fingers.  And now something within her seemed to have been reassured, for her eyes and her lips became faintly humorous.

“And where is this most forlorn and errant damsel, Sir Euan?” she inquired.  “For if I doubt her when I see her, no more than I doubt you when I look at you, something should be done in her behalf without delay....  The poor, unhappy child!  And what a little fool!  The Lord looks after his lambs, surely, surely—­ drat the little hussy!  It mads me to even think of her danger.  Did a body ever hear the like of it!  A-gypsying all alone—­ loitering around this army’s camp!  Mercy!  And what a little minx it is to so conduct—­ what with our godless, cursing headlong soldiery, and the loud, swaggering forest-runners!  Lord!  But it chills me to the bone!  The silly, saucy baggage!”

She shuddered there in the hot sunshine, then shot at me a look so keen and penetrating that I felt my ears go red.  Which sudden distress on my part again curved her lips into an indulgent smile.

“I always thought I knew you, Euan Loskiel,” she said.  “I think so still....  As for your fairy damsel in distress—­ h’m—­ when may I see her?”

In a low voice I confessed the late raggedness of Lois, and how she now wore an Oneida dress until the boxes, which I had commanded, might arrive from Albany.  I had to tell her this, had to explain how I had won from Lois this privilege of giving, spite of her pride.

“If I could bring her to you,” said I, “fittingly equipped and clothed, the pride in her would suffer less.  Were you to go with me now in your pretty silk and scarf, and patch and powder, and stand before her in the wretched hut which shelters her—­ the taint of charity would poison everything.  For she is like you, Mrs. Bleecker, lacking only what does not make, but merely and prettily confirms your quality and breeding—­ clothing and shelter, and the means to live fittingly....  For it is not condescension, not the lesser charity I ask, or she could receive; it is the countenance that birth lends to its equal in dire adversity.”

Curious and various were the emotions which passed in rapid succession over her pretty features; and not all seemed agreeable.  Then suddenly her eyes reflected a hidden laughter, and presently it came forth, a merry peal, and sweet withal.

“Oh, Euan, what a boy you are!  Had I been any other woman—­ but let it go.  You are as translucent as a woodland brook, and—­ at times you babble like one, confident that your music pleases everyone who hears it....  I pray you let me judge whether the errant lady be what a poet’s soul would have her....  I am not speaking with any unkind thought or doubt....  But woman must judge woman.  It is the one thing no man can ever do for her.  And the less he interferes during the judgment the better.”