Fine feathers will not make fine birds, and Mary’s masculine attire could no more make her look like a man than harness can disguise the graces of a gazelle.  Nothing could conceal her intense, exquisite womanhood.  With our looks of astonishment and admiration Mary’s blushes deepened.

“What is the matter?  Is anything wrong?” she asked.

[Illustration]

“Nothing is wrong,” answered Brandon, smiling in spite of himself; “nothing on earth is wrong with you, you may be sure.  You are perfect—­that is, for a woman; and one who thinks there is anything wrong about a perfect woman is hard to please.  But if you flatter yourself that you, in any way, resemble a man, or that your dress in the faintest degree conceals your sex, you are mistaken.  It makes it only more apparent.”

“How can that be?” asked Mary, in comical tribulation; “is not this a man’s doublet and hose, and this hat—­is it not a man’s hat?  They are all for a man; then why do I not look like one, I ask?  Tell me what is wrong.  Oh!  I thought I looked just like a man; I thought the disguise was perfect.”

“Well,” returned Brandon, “if you will permit me to say so, you are entirely too symmetrical and shapely ever to pass for a man.”

The flaming color was in her cheeks, as Brandon went on:  “Your feet are too small, even for a boy’s feet.  I don’t think you could be made to look like a man if you worked from now till doomsday.”

Brandon spoke in a troubled tone, for he was beginning to see in Mary’s perfect and irrepressible womanhood an insurmountable difficulty right across his path.

“As to your feet, you might find larger shoes, or, better still, jack-boots; and, as to your hose, you might wear longer trunks, but what to do about the doublet I am sure I do not know.”

Mary looked up helpless and forlorn, and the hot face went into her bended elbow as a realization of the situation seemed to dawn upon her.

“Oh!  I wish I had not come.  But I wanted to grow accustomed so that I could wear them before others.  I believe I could bear it more easily with any one else.  I did not think of it in that way,” and she snatched her cloak from where it had fallen on the floor and threw it around her.

“What way, Mary?” asked Brandon gently, and receiving no answer.  “But you will have to bear my looking at you all the time if you go with me.”

“I don’t believe I can do it.”

“No, no,” answered he, bravely attempting cheerfulness; “we may as well give it up.  I have had no hope from the first.  I knew it could not be done, and it should not.  I was both insane and criminal to think of permitting you to try it.”

Brandon’s forced cheerfulness died out with his words, and he sank into a chair with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.  Mary ran to him at once.  There had been a little moment of faltering, but there was no real surrender in her.