He did not speak to her. Something--he knew not what--held him back. But he suddenly felt a light touch upon his arm, and, looking up, saw the young lady standing beside him. ‘Do you think he is really gone?’ she asked, scarcely above her breath. ‘Oh yes! That sort of cur slinks off when you stoop for a stone, with his tail between his legs. It’s only when he has his kennel well behind him that he turns upon you and snaps,’ replied Myles, with homely if expressive metaphor. She drew a long breath, raised her head again, and said, with a mixture of dignity and gentleness which appealed intensely to his strongest feelings of admiration, ‘I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you!’ ‘Don’t mention it, miss,’ said he; and it was odd that, while Mr. Spenceley’s ‘miss’ made every right-minded person pant to knock him down and pound him well, Myles’s ‘miss’ was not in the faintest degree offensive. ‘You spoke as if you knew who he is. Do you?’ she added. ‘Oh yes! He’s well enough known; he’s the only son of that Spenceley who has the big factories down at Lower Place--“Bargaining Jack” they call him.’ ‘Oh! I know who you mean. Poor man! How I pity him for having such a son!’ ‘Had you ever seen him before?’ asked Myles, confirmed in his impression that she was not a native of Thanshope, and finding conversation easier than he had expected. ‘I have seen him several times lately. I seem always to be meeting him. Once I thought he had followed me, and then I thought how absurd to imagine such a thing; but he must have done it all the same.’ Myles had had inexplicable sensations while she spoke. He had known her so long without a voice, that now, when he heard it, she seemed to become a stranger again; and yet not a stranger. She had a sweet, low voice, clear and penetrating, and she spoke with an accent that had something not quite English in it. It would have been difficult--to Myles in his ignorance, impossible--to say in what the foreign element lay; but it was assuredly there. When she spoke she looked at him with fleeting glances which had nothing insincere in them, and her face lighted up and became lovely--and more than that, distinguished, spiritual; the slender figure was balanced with such a graceful poise; the delicate hands were free from all nervous restlessness. Her chestnut hair was abundant, and its dressing so simple and beautiful as alone to make her remarkable. Myles realised that she was most distinctly a ‘lady,’ but he could not make himself feel her to be either trivial or stupid. There had been nothing trivial in her behaviour. Her treatment of him flattered his discrimination when he remembered her late treatment of Mr. Spenceley. At that time of his life he had very wrong ideas on the subject of gentlemen, having mistaken notions as to their power and character; but the best part of his nature was soothed and pleased when so perfect a piece of refinement as this young lady treated him entirely as a gentleman.