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 amusement, 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.