She laughed, the sweet girlish laugh which seemed to him the most musical sound he had ever heard.
"A towel? Fancying carrying a towel to wipe oneself with when it rained! It is evident you don"t know our country. There are weeks sometimes in which it never ceases to rain. And you must be wet through yourself," she added, glancing at him.
He was on his knees at the moment carefully wiping the old habit skirt with his saturated handkerchief as if the former were something precious; and her woman"s eye noted his short crisp hair, the shapely head and the straight broad back.
"I"m afraid that"s all I can do!" he said, regretfully, as he rose and looked at her gravely. "Do you mean to say that you habitually ride out in such weather as this?"
"Why, yes!" she replied, lightly. "Why not? I am too substantial to melt, and I never catch cold. Besides, I have to go out in all weathers to see to the cattle and the sheep."
He leant against one of the posts which supported the shed, and gazed at her with more intense interest than any other woman had ever aroused in him.
"Isn"t there a foreman, a bailiff, whatever you call him, in these parts?"
She shook her head.
"No; we cannot afford one; so I do his work. And very pleasant work it is, especially in fine weather."
"And you are happy?" he asked, almost unconsciously.
Her frank eyes met his with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Yes, quite happy," she answered. "Why? Does it seem so unlikely, so unreasonable?"
"Well, it does," he replied, as if her frankness were contagious. "Of course, I could understand it if you did it occasionally, if you did it because you liked riding; but to be obliged, to have to go out in all weathers, it isn"t right!"
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"Yes, I suppose it seems strange to you. I suppose most of the ladies you know are rich, and only ride to amuse themselves, and never go out when they do not want to do so. Sir Stephen Orme--you--are very rich, are you not? We, my father and I, are poor, very poor. And if I did not look after things, if I were not my own bailiff--Oh, well, I don"t know what would happen."
Stafford gnawed at his moustache as he gazed at her. The exquisitely colourless face, in which the violet eyes glowed like two twin flowers, the delicately cut lips, soft and red, the dark hair cl.u.s.tering at the ivory temples in wet rings, set his heart beating with a heavy pulsation that was an agony of admiration and longing--a longing that was vague and indistinct.
"Yes, I suppose it must seem strange to you," she said, as if she were following out the lines of her own thoughts. "You must be accustomed to girls who are so different."
"Yes, they"re different," he admitted. "Most of the women I know would be frightened to death if they were caught in such a rain as this; would be more than frightened to death if they had to ride down that hill most of "em think they"ve done wonder if they get in at the end of a run over a fairly easy country; and none of "em could doctor a sick sheep to save their lives."
"Yes," she said, dreamily. "I"ve seen them, but only at a distance. But I didn"t know anything about farming until I came home."
"And do you never go away from here, go to London for a change and get a dance, and--and all that?" he asked.
She shook her head indifferently.
"No, I never leave the dale. I cannot. My father could not spare me.
Has it left off raining yet?"
She went to the front of the shed and looked out.
"No, it is still pelting; please come back; it is pouring off the roof; your hair is quite wet again."
She laughed, but she obeyed.
"I suppose that gentleman, the man in the carriage, was a friend of Sir Stephen"s, as he asked the way to your house?"
"I don"t know," replied Stafford. "I don"t know any of my father"s friends. I knew very little of him until last night."
She looked at him with frank, girlish interest.
"Did you find the new house very beautiful?" she asked.
Stafford nodded.
"Yes," he said, absently. "It is a kind of--of palace. It"s beautiful enough--perhaps a little too--too rich," he admitted.
She smiled.
"But then, you are rich. And is it true that a number of visitors are coming down? I heard it from Jessie."
"Who is Jessie?" he asked, for he was more interested in the smallest detail of this strange, bewilderingly lovely girl"s life than his father"s affairs.
"Jessie is my maid. I call her mine, because she is very much attached to me; but she is really our house-maid, parlour-maid. We have very few servants: I suppose you have a great many up at the new house?"
He nodded.
"Oh, yes," he said, half apologetically. "Too many by far. I wish you could, see it," he added.
She laughed softly.
"Thank you; but that is not likely. I think it is not raining so hard now, and that I can go."
"It is simply pouring still," he said, earnestly and emphatically. "You would get drenched if you ventured out."
"But I can"t stay here all day," she remarked, with a laugh. "I have a great deal to do: I have to see that the sheep have not strayed, and that the cows are in the meadows; the fences are bad in places, and the stupid creatures are always straying. It is wonderful how quickly a cow finds a weak place in a fence."
Stafford"s face grew red, a brick-dust red.
"It"s not fit work for you," he said. "You--you are only a girl; you can"t be strong enough to face such weather, to do such work."
The beautiful eyes grew wide and gazed at him with girlish amus.e.m.e.nt, and something of indignation.
"I"m older than you think. I"m not a girl!" she retorted. "And I am as strong as a horse." She drew herself up and threw her head back. "I am never tired--or scarcely ever. One day I rode to Keswick and back, and when I got home Jason met me at the gate and told me that the steers had "broken" and had got on the Bryndermere road. I started after them, but missed them for a time, and only came up with them at Landal Water--ah, you don"t know where that is; well, it is a great many miles. Of course I had a rest coming back, as I could only drive them slowly."
Something in his eyes--the pity, the indignation, the wonder that this exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base uses--shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed in them.
"Ah, I see; you are thinking that it is--is not ladylike, that none of your lady-friends would do it if even if they were strong enough?"
Stafford would have scorned himself if he had been tempted to evade those beautiful eyes, that sweet, and now rather haughty voice; besides, he was not given to evasion with man or woman.
"I wasn"t thinking quite that," he said. "But I"ll tell you what I was thinking, if you"ll promise not to be offended."