Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. God! how beautiful she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead, and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was standing before her bare-headed. "I am a trespasser, I fear," he said hesitatingly. She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly. "No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court." "It is a favorite walk of mine," he said. "Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked, pointing to his book. He glanced down at it, and then up at her again. "Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors together." She read the title, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in her face. "Shelley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not understand him." For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different eyes. "Not understand Shelley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried, then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love him." She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the _Queen_ beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she chose to dissent from him. "I find him too mystical," she said; "too incomprehensible." He looked down at her from his superior height with kindling eyes. It was odd how greatly she was surprised in him. She had imagined him to be a cynic.