Sitting on the wall, his feet rested easily on the ground while hers swung free, and while he seemed to loll in complete indifference, she was conscious of a tenseness she could not prevent. She hated her enjoyment of his manner, which was impudent, but it had the spice of danger that she liked and it was in defiance of the one and encouragement of the other that she said, “I’m sure you would never talk to Aunt Rose like that.” “I should never give your Aunt Rose my confidence,” he said severely. It was impossible not to feel a warmth of satisfaction, and she asked shortly, “Why not?” “She wouldn’t understand. You’re human. I’m devilish lonely. Well, you know my circumstances.” A shadow which seemed to affect the brightness of the autumn day, even deadening the clear shouting of the men and the jingling of the chains attached to the horses, passed over Francis Sales’s face. “One wants a friend.” A cry of genuine bewilderment came from Henrietta. “But I thought you were so fond of Aunt Rose!” From sulky contemplation of his brown boots and leggings, he looked at her. His eyes, of a light yet dense blue, were widely opened. “What makes you think that? Did she tell you?” Henrietta’s lip curled derisively. “No, it was you, when you looked at her. And now you have told me again.” She had a moment of thoughtful contempt for the blundering of men. There was Charles, who always seemed to wander in a mist, and now this Francis Sales, who revealed what he wished to hide. He was mentally inferior to Mr. Jenkins, who had a quickness of wit, a vulgar sharpness of tongue which kept the mind on the alert; but physically she had shrunk from Mr. Jenkins’s proximity, while that of Francis Sales, in his well-cut tweeds and his shining boots, who seemed as clean as the air surrounding him, had an attraction actually enhanced by his heaviness of spirit. He was like a child possessed, consciously or unconsciously, of a weapon, and her sense of her own superiority was corrected by fear of his strength and of the subtle weakness in her own blood. She heard a murmur. “She has treated me very badly. I’ve known her all my life. Well—” Henrietta, with a gentleness he appreciated and a cleverness he missed, said commiseratingly, “She wouldn’t let you take her hand in the wood.” “What on earth are you talking about? Look here, Henrietta, what do you mean?” There had been so many occasions of the kind that it was impossible to know to which one she referred, and, looking back, his past seemed to be blocked with frustrations and petty torments. “What do you mean?” he repeated. “Never mind.” “This is some gossip,” he muttered. “Yes, among the squirrels and the rabbits. Woods are full of eyes and ears.” “Well,” he said, “the eyes and ears will have to find another home. There will soon be no wood left.” So he had tried to take Aunt Rose’s hand in this wood too! She laughed with the pretty trill which made her laughter a new thing every time.