She brightened at once.
The golden shafts of the setting sun shone full in her face: her dark eyes did not mind them; she did not put up her hand to shield herself, but stood and looked directly into the glittering, brilliant western sky. He put his quizzical expression back out of sight, and began to talk to her. She answered him frankly. He tested her a little; he was an old hand at it. Of coquetry she gave back not a sign. Gradually the conviction came to him that she had not asked him up there for personal reasons at all. It was, then, the horses.
When he had decided this, he sat down on a stump, and went on talking to her with renewed interest. After a while she laughed, and there came into her face that peculiar brilliancy which the conjunction of dark eyes and the gleam of white, even teeth can give to a thin-cheeked brunette. Then he remembered to look at her hands, and was relieved to find them, although a little roughened by toil, charmingly shaped and finely aristocratic—fit portion of the tall, well-rounded figure, which only needed self-consciousness to be that of a young Diana. The girl seemed so happy and radiant, so impersonal in the marked attention she gave to him, which was not unlike the attention she might have given to her grandfather, that Wainwright recognized it at last as only another case of his being of no consequence, and smiled to himself over it. Evidently, if he wanted notice, he must, as it were, mount the horses. He had had no especial intention of making excursions among the mountains; but that was, apparently, the fixed idea of these horse-owners. They were, for some reason, pleased to be mysterious; he would be mysterious also.
"I hope Mr. Head's horses are good ones?" he said confidentially; "I shall need very good horses."
All her color gone instantly, and the old cloud of anxiety on her face again.
"Yes, they are good horses," she answered; and then her eyes rested upon him, and he read trouble, fear, and dislike, succeeding each other openly in their dark depths.
"Is it because I am a Northerner, Miss Dooris?" he said quietly. He had made up his mind, rather unfairly, to break down the fence between them by a close question, which so young a girl would not know how to parry.
She started, and the color rushed up all over her face again.
"Of course, it is all right," she answered hurriedly, in a low voice. "I know that the laws must be maintained, and that some persons must do the work that you do. People can not always choose their occupations, I suppose, and no doubt they—no doubt you—I mean, that it can not be helped."
"May I ask what you take me for?" said Wainwright, watching her.