"I hope you never will," he cried, warmly.
"I do not know how," she said. "I must always be what God and nature made me."
"They made you fair enough," he whispered.
And then he owned to himself that she was not like other girls.
She drew back proudly, swiftly; no smile came to her lips, no laughing light to her eyes.
"Speak to me as you would to one in your own rank, my lord," she said, haughtily. "Though fate has made me a farmer's niece, nature made me——"
"A queen," he interrupted.
And she was satisfied with the acknowledgment. They sat down under one of the great oak-trees, a great carpet of bluebells under their feet.
Leone looked thoughtful; she gathered some sprays of bluebells and held them in her hands, her white fingers toying with the little flowers, then she spoke:
"I know," she said, "that no lady—for instance, in your own rank of life—would walk through this wood with you on a summer's afternoon."