“Lord, lord!” he said.  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard of this many a day.  Why a little country hussy like you ought to be honoured by receiving a gentleman’s kisses.  There, my dear, get rid of your dog.  I don’t want to kick her brains out as I could easily do, and as she deserves to have done for having bitten me.  Send her home with a stone at her heels and come and sit by me on the stile.  You shall see how prettily a gentleman makes love.”

I suppose I must have looked at him with the horror I felt for him, for he laughed again.

“What,” he said, “am I so ugly as all that?  I can tell you, my dear, that a good many of your sex, both small and great, regard me as a very pretty fellow.  In fact, I’m pestered with the women.  I assure you I really am, my dear.  And so you won’t give me a kiss of your own free will?  Why, I could take it if I liked; but I’m not sure that I want to take it till you come and offer it to me of your own free will.”

“That I shall never do,” I said.

“I’m not so sure of that,” he replied.  “There aren’t many ladies in this county wouldn’t give me a kiss if I wanted it, much less a little dairymaid like you.”

I thought at the time that it was his egregious vanity and conceit, but in this I was wrong, as events afterwards proved.  Indeed, it was a very strange thing how women, both gentle and simple, were in many cases attracted by the coarse good looks and insolent, swaggering way of Richard Dawson—­an inconceivable thing to me in the case of a lady, although more easily understood in the case of a poor peasant girl like Nora Brady.

His mood had apparently changed, and I was less afraid of him, although my detestation of him had been deepened by his conduct to me.

He still sat on the stile so that I could not pass him; but all the anger had gone out of his face, although the blood still trickled a little from the back of his hand where Dido had planted her teeth.

“Will you let me pass, please?” said I.

“Presently, my dear.”  How I hated him for his easy insolence!  “I want to hear first what it is you dislike in me.”

“Everything,” I answered.

“Why,” he said mockingly, “it is a thing of spirit, and it will be the more pleasure to tame it.  I am tired of birds that come fluttering into my hands and cling to me when I no longer desire them.  Upon my word, I like you the better for it.  Come, I’m sorry I frightened you.  I can say no more than that; it is the fault of your sex, which is so complaisant.”

He put his hand into his pocket and drew out a handful of coins.

“Here’s a sovereign,” he said, “to buy a ribbon.  It can’t make you prettier, but may it make you kinder when next we meet!”

He flung the coin as though he expected me to catch it, but, of course, I made no effort to do so and it fell on the ground and rolled away into a heap of dead leaves.  No matter what happened I could not have kept myself from kicking at it contemptuously with my foot where it lay.