"You can't help being so tall and strong and manly, and--and--and--I'm only an old woman, Mr Linnell," she said, smiling in a deprecating way, "and I've known you since you were such a boy, so I shall say it--you won't be vain--so handsome." "Am I?" he said, laughing. "Ah well, handsome is that handsome does, Miss Clode." "Exactly," she said, laying her hand upon his arm and speaking very earnestly, "and I have three--three notes here." "For me?" he said, blushing like a woman, and then frowning at his weakness. "Yes, Mr Linnell, for you." "Tear them up, then," he said sharply. "I don't want them." Miss Clode gave vent to a sigh of relief. "Or no," he said firmly. "They were given to you to deliver. Give them to me." She passed three triangular notes to him half unwillingly, and he took them, glanced at the handwritings, and then tore them across without opening them. "No lady worth a second thought would address a man like that," he said sharply. "Where shall I throw this stuff?" Miss Clode stooped down and lifted a waste-paper basket from behind the counter, and he threw the scraps in. "We are old friends, Miss Clode," he said. "Burn them for me, please, at once. I should not like to be so dishonourable as to disgrace the writers by letting them be seen." "People are talking about you so, sir." "About me?" he cried. "Yes, Mr Linnell; they say you behaved like a hero." "Absurd!" "When you swam out to the pony carriage and helped to rescue those--er-- ladies." "My dear Miss Clode, would not any fisherman on the beach have done the same if he had been near? I wish people would not talk such nonsense." "People will talk down here, Mr Linnell. They have so little else to do." "More's the pity," said Richard pettishly. "And is--is Mrs Dean quite well again, Mr Linnell?" "Oh yes," he said coolly. "She was more frightened than hurt." "Does Miss Dean seem any worse, sir? Does she look pale?" The little woman asked these questions in a hesitating way, her hands busy the while over various objects on her counter. "Pale--pale?" said Richard, turning over the violin strings and looking to see which were the most clear. "Really, I did not notice, Miss Clode." "He would not speak so coolly if this affair had ripened into anything more warm than being on friendly terms," thought the little woman, and she seemed to breathe more freely. "I'm afraid I've been very rude," continued the young man. "I ought to have asked after them this morning." Miss Clode gave another sigh of relief. "No one shall see those scraps, Mr Linnell," she said quietly; and the look of affectionate pride in him seemed to intensify. "It is quite right that a young gentleman like you should have some one to love him, but not in such a way as that."