comfort to me. I know my preferring to live and die just where I am, rather than face the world and its dangers, is pare cowardice, and if I were a man it would kill me to feel this; but, being a woman, I console myself with the reflection that weakness and cowardice are my sex's attributes."
She rose to her feet, as she finished speaking, and, with the air of stateliness which her slim figure always had when she was standing, she looked the reverse of weak or cowardly. She was, in reality, not a tall young woman, but her erectness made her look taller than she was. Hobart recognized a certain power in her which she was unconscious of herself, and it seemed to him impossible that this fine young creature should be cast for an insignificant part in the drama of life.
"Shall we walk toward the barn and look papa and Mr. Bertrand up?" said the girl, with a sudden change of tone that surprised her companion, and, without waiting for his reply, she led the way from the room, and Hobart was obliged to follow. Was she perhaps a little bored? he wondered. It seemed hardly possible, with the ardent manner he recalled. That manner now, however, was nothing but a memory, for the young woman at his side had not a vestige of it.
"I will show you the way and find them for you, if I can," she said, as she paused in the hall to look about for a hat. Her own had been put away up-stairs, and there was only the blue-checked sun-bonnet in sight; but when she had taken this up and carried it with her she suddenly found it impossible to put it on, and preferred to bare her lovely skin to the sun's full rays, to the alternative of sacrificing her dignity so far as to assume this sun-bonnet. She had never felt it to be a sacrifice of dignity heretofore, but then she had never before been in a presence that made her feel conscious of the fact that she had absolutely outgrown her childhood and must be equal to the demands made upon her as a woman. She left the talk almost entirely to her companion, as they went along, and did not even look at him, which gave him all the better opportunity of looking at her. With her face fearlessly bared to the full light of the afternoon sun, without even the shadow of the straw hat-brim she had worn in the morning, she passed with the composure of unconsciousness the ordeal of the young man's scrutinizing gaze. Little need had she, he thought, to flinch at such a test! The absolute realness of her beauty, the fineness of her skin, the pureness of her contour, the tints in hair and lips and eyes, came out the more noticeably by reason of the strong light thrown upon them, and as the young man looked he saw, or fancied he saw, beyond all these, a new charm of expression. She looked animated, and he thought he might almost say happy.
