"I will leave you," said Sir Oswald, "to get better acquainted. Pauline, you will show Captain Langton the aviary."
"Yes," she assented, carelessly. "But will you send Miss Hastings here? She knows the various birds far better than I do."
Sir Oswald, with a pleased expression on his face, walked away.
"So you have an aviary at the Court, Miss Darrell. It seems to me there is nothing wanting here. You do not seem interested; you do not like birds?"
"Not caged ones," she replied. "I love birds almost as though they were living friends, but not bright-plumaged birds in golden cages. They should be free and wild in the woods and forests, filling the summer air with joyous song. I love them well then."
"You like unrestricted freedom?" he observed.
"I do not merely like it, I deem it an absolute necessity. I should not care for life without it."
The captain looked more attentively at her. It was the Darrell face, surely enough—features of perfect beauty, with a soul of fire shining through them.
"Yet," he said, musingly, cautiously feeling his way, "there is but little freedom—true freedom—for women. They are bound down by a thousand narrow laws and observances—caged by a thousand restraints."
"There is no power on earth," she returned, hastily, "that can control thoughts or cage souls; while they are free, it is untrue to say that there is no freedom."