"May I help you across?" he asked, coming toward her, hat in hand. He felt that the words fell into a sort of jaunty rhythm of their own accord. The girl looked up quickly, startled at his sudden appearance. The movement caused her sunbonnet to slip back, revealing her face, and Gilbert felt suddenly and unaccountably abashed, for the girl looked straight into his amused face with a glance of grave and unapproachable dignity. He did not even notice, at first, how pretty she was. He saw only those serious eyes. They were wonderful eyes, too; deep, and of a strange, elusive amber, like the water at her feet. They held the mystery of its deep brown pools, and the light of the golden flecks upon its surface. There were the same brown shadows and golden lights repeated in the masses of bronze hair piled like a crown on the top of her shapely head. From some impulse he did not understand, Gilbert felt a vague desire to apologize for his very existence. It seemed as though that searching glance had read the frivolous thoughts in which he had been indulging. He wondered, in deep mortification, if she had noticed any faint tinge of familiarity in his manner. "I--I beg your pardon. I hope I did not startle you," he said, half stammering. "I hope you will let me help you across." "Thank you, you are very kind." Her voice was low, and very musical, her manner was dignity itself. "I did not know the spaces were so wide." She spoke with a frank simplicity, looking at him very honestly and very gravely, and Gilbert felt tacitly rebuked. He was struck by the fact that this country girl, in the coarse dress and sunbonnet, whom he had whimsically likened to a rustic lass, to be helped across a brook for a kiss, had instantly, by a mere glance, clothed the situation in an impregnable mantle of conventionality. He took her basket and held out his hand, feeling as though he were about to assist a princess from her carriage. With a touch she sprang past him and stepped quietly up the bank. "Thank you," she said, sedately, as she took the basket from him. "I think it is Dr. Allen to whom I am indebted, is it not?" Gilbert clutched his hat again. "Yes, I am very fortunate to have had the privilege," he said, feeling with relief that he was beginning to recover. "I am Miss Cameron," she said, with a stateliness that seemed to convert the sunbonnet into a crown, and the basket of eggs into a scepter. Gilbert's mind dived back into the remembrance of his stableboy's remarks of a few minutes earlier. What had he said? He could not remember, except that the village had designated some one of that name as the object of his future attentions, and there was something, too, about red hair. He thought her hair beautiful--quite wonderful, indeed, in its bronze splendor.