"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked,

as listlessly as before.

But behind her lowered lids her eyes were shining with a singular

brightness.

Howard turned to her delightedly.

"My dear Miss Falconer, if you were a man I should ask to shake hands

with you. It so exactly describes him. That's just what he is. As

handsome as the dew--I beg your pardon!--as frank as a boy, as gentle

as a woman, as staunch, as a bull-dog, as brave--he would have stopped

a drayman's team just as readily as yours last night--and as

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invulnerable as that marble statue."

He pointed to a statue of Adonis which stood whitely on the edge of the

lawn, and she raised her eyes and looked at it dreamily.

"I could break that thing if I had a big hammer," she said.

"I daresay," he said. "But can't break Stafford. Honestly "--he looked

at her--"I wish you could!"

"Why?" she asked, turning her eyes on him for the first time.

Howard was silent for a moment, then he looked at her with a curious

gravity.

"Because it would be good for him: because I am afraid for him."

"Afraid?" she echoed.

"Yes," he said, with a nod. "Some day he will run against something

that will bring him to smash. Some woman--But I beg your pardon. Do you

know, Miss Falconer, that you have a dangerous way of leading one to

speak the truth--which one should never--or very rarely--do. Why, on

earth am I telling you all this about Stafford Orme?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You were saying 'some woman,'" she said.

He gave a sigh of resignation.

"You are irresistible! Some woman who will be quite unworthy of him.

It's always the case. The block of ice you can not smash with your

biggest hammer is broken into smithereens by a needle. That's the peril

before Stafford--but let us hope he will prove the exception to the

rule and escape. He's safe at present, at any rate."

She though of the scene she had witnessed, the girl sitting sideways on

Stafford Orme's horse, and her face flushed for an instant.

"Are you sure?" she said.

"Quite!" he responded, confidently. "I know all Stafford's flirtations,

great and small: if there was anything serious he would tell me; and as

he hasn't--there isn't."

She laughed; the slow, soft laugh which made Howard think suddenly,

strangely, of a sleepy tigress he had once watched in a rajah's zoo, as

she lay basking in the sun: a thing of softness and beauty and--death.




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