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." She considered for a moment, then she said: "I do not think you will offend me.

What was it ?" "Well, I was thinking that--see here, now, Miss Heron, I've got your promise!--it is not worthy of you--such work, I mean." "Because I'm a girl ?" she said, her lip curving with a smile.
"No," he said, gravely; "because you are a lady; because you are so--so refined, so graceful, so"-- he dared not say "beautiful," and consequently he floundered and broke down.

"If you were a farmer's daughter, clumsy and rough and awkward, it would not seem to inappropriate for you to be herding cattle and counting sheep; but--now your promise!--when I come to think that ever since I met you, whenever I think of you I think of--of--a beautiful flower--that now I have seen you in evening-dress, I realise how wrong it is that you should do such work.

Oh, dash it! I know it's like my cheek to talk to you like this," he wound up, abruptly and desperately.
While he had been speaking, the effect of his words had expressed itself in her eyes and in the alternating colour and pallor of her face.