Never loquacious, there was something about this man's face and manner, his masterful spirit underneath his courteous bearing, his look of masculine power and domination, his admiring eyes that fixed themselves on her so unflinchingly--not with insolence, but as if he had the prescriptive right of manhood to look at her, only a woman, as he chose, he commanding and she obeying--that quelled and silenced her even beyond her wont. He was the first gentleman of noteworthy appearance who had ever spoken to her--not counting Alick, nor the masters who had taught her at school, nor Mr. Birkett, nor Mr. Fairbairn, as gentlemen of noteworthy appearance--and the first of all things has a special influence over young minds. "You are brave to walk so far alone: you ought to have a dog like Rover to protect you," Edgar said, still looking at her with those unflinching eyes, which oppressed her even when she did not see them. "I am not brave, and I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way. "All the same, you ought to have protection," Edgar said authoritatively, and Leam did not reply. She only looked at him earnestly, wondering against what she should be protected, having abandoned by this time her belief in banditti and wild beasts. If his eyes oppressed her, hers half embarrassed him. There was such a strange mixture of intensity and innocence in them, he scarcely knew how to meet them. "It is absurd to pretend that we do not know each other," then said Edgar after a short pause, smiling; and his smile was very sweet and pleasant. "You are Miss Dundas--I am Edgar Harrowby." "Yes, I know," Leam answered. "How is that?" he asked, "_I_ knew _you_ from your photograph--once seen not to be forgotten again," gallantly--"but how should you know me?" Leam raised her eyes from the ground where she had cast them. Those slow full looks, intense, tragic, fixed, had a startling effect of which she was wholly unconscious. Edgar felt his own grow dark and tender as he met hers. If the soul and mind within only answered to the mask without, what queen or goddess could surpass this half-breed Spanish girl, this country-born, unnoted, but glorious Leam Dundas? he thought. "And I knew you from yours," she answered. "An honor beyond my deserts," said Edgar. Not that he thought the notice of a girl, even with such a face as this, beyond his deserts. Indeed, if a queen or a goddess had condescended to him, it would not have been a grace beyond his merits; but it sounded pretty to say so, and served to make talk as well as anything else. And to make talk was the main business on hand at this present moment. "Why an honor?" asked Leam, ignorant of the elements of flirting.