“Oh, certainly not—­certainly not,” said he.  “But I should be delighted if you would let me stay and look on; it would interest me quite as much—­every bit as much.”

“Oh, stay by all means,” said she, turning to look at the western sky.  “But I wish you would take my rod.  What are they all about to let you come wandering out alone, on the first day of your arrival?”

“Oh, that’s quite right,” said he, cheerfully.  “Lady Adela and the young ladies are all busy dressmaking.”

“Ye may be getting ready, Miss Honnor,” old Robert interposed.  “There’ll be a cloud over the sun directly.”

Thus admonished, the tall young fisher-maiden stepped down by the side of a rock overhanging this wide, black-swirling pool, and proceeded to get her tackle in order.

“You know I’ll give you my rod whenever you like to take a turn,” said she, addressing Lionel even as she was getting the fly on to the water.  “But we can’t afford to waste a moment of shadow.  I have done nothing all day on account of the sunlight.”

And now the welcome shade was over, and, after a preliminary cast or two to get the line out, she was sending her fly well across, and letting it drift quietly down the stream, to be recovered by a series of small and gentle jerks.  Lionel was supposed to be looking on at the fishing; but, when he dared, he was stealing covert glances at her; for this was one of the most striking faces he had seen for many a day.  There was a curiously pronounced personality about her features, refined as they were; her lips were proud—­and perhaps a little firmer than usual just now, when she was wielding a seventeen-foot rod; her clear hazel eyes were absolutely fearless; and her broadly marked and somewhat square eyebrows appeared to lend strength rather than gentleness to the intellectual forehead.  Then the stateliness of her neck and the set of her head; she seemed to recall to him some proud warrior-maiden out of Scandinavian mythology—­though she was dressed in simple homespun and had for her only henchman this quiet old Robert, who, crouching down under a birch-tree, was watching every cast made by his mistress with the intensest interest.  And at last Lionel was startled to hear the old man call out, but in an undertone—­“Ho!”

Honnor Cunyngham began coolly to pull in her line through the rings.

“What is it?” Lionel asked, in wonder.

“I rose a fish then, but he came short,” she said, quietly.  “We’ll give him a rest.  A pretty good one, wasn’t he, Robert?”

“Ay, he wass that, Miss Honnor, a good fish.  And ye did not touch him?”

“Not at all; he’ll come again sure enough.”

And then she turned to Lionel? and he was pleased to observe, as she went on to speak to him about her sisters-in-law and their various pursuits, that, proud as those lips were, a sort of grave good-humor seemed to be their habitual expression, and also that those transparently honest, hazel eyes had a very attractive sunniness in them when she was amused.