Gilbert had known many women more or less intimately, but never one of his own countrywomen. He had heard much of the refinement and delicacy of the British young lady. This one, who seemed, from the occasional view he could obtain of her, and from the sound of her voice, to possess both these qualities in the highest degree, struck him as having a different attitude towards things in general to the one he had been led to expect in the class of femininity she represented. As she had herself said, there had been no time for surprise, and he now suddenly found that he was surprised--surprised by her presence, surprised to find that she seemed to feel neither agitation nor any particular horror at what had happened. He had known women in Spain who found their most cherished entertainment in the bull-ring, but he had never met one who would have taken the scene she had broken in upon so calmly. The changed customs of our modern life have made it hard to realize that, in the days when Gilbert and Cecilia met by torchlight, it was still a proof of true sensibility to swoon when confronted by anything unusual, and that ladies met cows in the road with the same feelings with which they would now meet man-eating tigers. Indeed, the woman of the present moment, in the face of such an encounter, would probably make some more or less sensible effort towards her own safety, but, at the time of which I speak, there was nothing for a lady to do at the approach of physical difficulties but subside as rapidly as possible on to the cleanest part of the path. But Cecilia had been brought up differently. Lady Eliza led so active a life, and was apt to require her to do such unusual things, that she had seen too many emergencies to be much affected by them. There was a deal of the elemental woman in Cecilia, and she had just come too late to see the elemental man in Speid brush away the layer of civilization, and return to his natural element of fight. She was almost sorry she had been too late. She walked on beside him, cool, gracious, the folds of her skirt gathered up into her hand, and he longed for the lamp-lit house, that he might see her clearly. ‘The man with the torch is your servant, is he not?’ said she. ‘He told me he had come from Whanland.’ ‘He is,’ replied Speid; ‘but how long he will remain so is another matter. I am very angry with him--disgusted, in fact.’ ‘What has he done, sir, if I may ask?’ ‘Everything that is most intolerable. He drove me to the very end of my patience, in the first instance.’ ‘How long is your patience, Mr. Speid?’ ‘It was short to-night,’ replied Gilbert. ‘And then?’ ‘Then I brought him here to be of some use, and while I was looking over the wall for these thieving ruffians, he ran away.’ ‘He does not look very brave,’ observed Cecilia, a smile flickering round her lips. ‘He arrived at the door, and rang up the house, and I could see that he was far from comfortable.’