“Strange child,” he said, with a grave smile. “Who taught you all this, so young, and without the faith becoming this girlish beauty?”
The anger was burning out in my heart. There was something manly and reproving in his calm seriousness that subdued me. He reached out his hand, while the smile brightened all over his face.
“Come, let us be friends—you cannot keep angry with me, because I have not deserved it!”
I gave him my hand. He stooped in his saddle as if to press his lips upon it, but checked the impulse; and, holding it tight an instant, let it drop, saying very earnestly,
“I would not have wounded you for the world.”
That instant the undergrowth close by us was sharply parted, and Turner broke into the path on which we had paused.
I felt the blood leave my face, and, for the first time, trembled at the sight of my benefactor. The old man looked sternly across me to George Irving, whom he neither saluted nor addressed; but, taking Jupiter by the bit, said in a deep, husky voice, that made the heart die in my bosom,
“Zana, come away!”
I dropped the bridle, and covering my face with both gauntleted hands, cowered down upon my saddle with a keen sense of the humiliation which he was witnessing.
I listened breathlessly.