And beside all this perfection of æsthetic beauty, he saw in the girl a beauty of mind and soul which shone in her dark eyes as they met his across the apple-boughs. All this was brought home to him so positively that only his subconscious sense of the fitness of things kept him from speaking his thoughts aloud; and the situation was appreciably relieved when Stella said casually:
“Are you staying down to-day, Mr. Humphreys?”
“Yes,” he said conventionally; “I go back this afternoon.”
“Ah! you are a relative of the Misses Flint?”
“No, not that, but my mother was an old friend; though I had never met the Flint ladies until yesterday.”
“And you live in the world?—the great outside world? I have always longed for it.”
“And why shouldn’t you have it?” Humphreys’s eyes across the green apple-boughs looked straight into Stella’s.
“Because I am not of the world,” she said simply; “because I’m a country girl—country born and bred.”
“But that doesn’t mean that you must always continue to live in the country.”
“No; though I feel sure I shall. But tell me of the great world. Have you been all over it?”