There was no getting out of this; and I said to myself that Miss Dariel was not quite so soft after all. What had she told me about herself? Nothing. How much about her father? Very little. And here was I being towed off to him, when I wanted to talk with her, study her, make way with her, find out whether there was any other villain in pursuit of her marvellous attractions,--in a word, make my best love to her. But this was the very thing she would not have at present; and I felt like a man tumbling out of a tree, through making too lofty a grab at the fruit. So I fell into the opposite extreme of manner, to make it come home to her that I was hurt. This was another mistake; because, as I came to understand long afterwards, the feminine part of mankind is never struck all of a heap, as we are. If you will only think twice, you will see that it never could be expected. For drop as we may--and the ladies too often call upon us now to drop it--the sense that is inborn in us, of a purer and higher birth in them, which they kept and exalted by modesty--even if at their own demand we let fall every atom of that, and endeavour to regard them as bipeds on a wheel, with limbs rounder than our own,--I say that we ought to try still to regard them as better than ourselves, though they will not have it so. And what could say more for their modesty? I looked at Dariel, and saw that she was not thinking of me at all, except as a matter of business. And fearing to have gone too far, I tried to behave in every way as a well-conducted stranger. This put her into a friendly state of mind, and even more than that. For it was now her place to be hospitable; and I displayed such bashfulness, that believing her father to be the greatest man on earth, she concluded that I was terribly afraid of him. "You must not be uneasy about meeting him;" she spoke in a voice as gentle as the whisper of the wind in May, when it tempts a young lamb to say "Ba!" "I assure you, Mr. Cran-lee, although he can be very stern with persons at all wicked, to those who are upright and good, he is a great deal less austere and rigid than even I am. And I am afraid that you have discovered much harshness in my character, for you appear to dread a walk with me." I had fallen behind as we approached the door, partly to show my humility, and partly to admire the grace and true perfection of her slender figure in motion. English girls may have lovely figures, but none of them can walk like that. "No," I said after some delay, to make her turn her head again, and repeat that look of penitence; "you have been as kind as I could expect, perhaps more kind than the ladies of your country are to a mere stranger."