She spoke to him in the easiest, friendliest manner; asked him if he had ever been to the château before; if he liked a fancy fair; hoped he meant to spend EVER so much money. She opened her eyes very wide as she said this, and he saw how blue they were, and then felt an actual blush kindling under his brown skin. Such a woman as this had never before walked by his side, talking to him, and smiling at him. He answered her animated inquiries as best he might, and found himself thinking of all manner of incongruous things,--of Maude Hillary’s blue eyes and point-lace parasol, of his own awkwardness and ignorance, of the narrow points of her dove-coloured boots, as they peeped from under her dress now and then, like anything in the world you like _except_ Sir John Suckling’s mice, of the old farmhouse on the Cornish moorland, of little Susy in a white dimity sun-bonnet. He had never been in such a place before, mixing on equal terms with well-dressed men and women, about most of whom even he, in despite of his ignorance, recognized a nameless something that stamped them as superior to the common run of well-dressed people. That in itself was enough to bewilder him. He had never before seen such a woman as Maude Hillary; and even experienced young men from Government offices found Maude Hillary bewildering. He felt terribly embarrassed and out of place; and after undergoing a sharp ordeal on the terrace, where he was introduced to Miss Desmond, and the two young men staying at the Cedars, he was not a little rejoiced to find himself free for a few minutes, while Mr. Hillary and his daughter talked to a group of new arrivals. He strolled away to the end of the terrace, and lounged upon the marble balustrade, looking down at a lane below--a kind of gorge cut through two separate gardens, in which some of the common folks of the neighbourhood were gathered, listening to the music of the band, and staring at the splendid line of carriages waiting for the guests in the gardens above. “I didn’t think I was such a fool as to let my brains be muddled like this by a lot of fine dresses and parasols, and flower-beds, and the playing of a brass band,” he thought; “they’re flesh and blood, those people, I suppose, like the rest of us. _She’s_ flesh and blood, just as much as my mother that’s dead and gone, or poor little Susy. But when I looked at her just now, it seemed as if there was a light shining all about her somehow, that almost blinded me. She spoke to me as prettily and as kindly as she spoke to her father; and yet I felt more afraid of her than if she had been my uncle Oliver, and I a little boy again, tumbling down his corn in the valley farm.”