Dulce stares at him in a bewildered fashion. Her manner, indeed, considering all things, is perfect.
"Why didn't you answer me?" asks Mr. Gower, feeling himself justified in throwing some indignation into this speech.
"Were you calling me?" she asks, with the utmost innocence, letting her large eyes rest calmly upon his, and bravely suppressing the smile that is dying to betray her; "really? How was it I didn't hear you? I was sitting here all the time. These evergreens must be thick! Do you know I am horribly afraid I shall grow deaf in my old age, because there are moments even now—such, for example, as the present—when I cannot bring myself to hear anything."
This last remark contains more in it than appears to Mr. Gower.
"Yet, only last night," he says resentfully, "you told me it would be dangerous to whisper secrets near you to another, as you had the best ears in the world."
"Did I say all that? Well, perhaps. I am troublesome in that way sometimes," says Miss Blount, shifting her tactics without a quiver. "Just now," glancing at a volume that lies upon her lap, "I daresay it was the book that engrossed my attention; I quite lose myself in a subject when it is as interesting as this one is," with another glance at the dark bound volume on her knee.
Gower stoops and reads the title of the book that had come between him and the thoughts of his beloved. He reads it aloud, slowly and with grim meaning—"Notes on Tasmanian Cattle! It sounds enthralling," he says, with bitter irony.
"Yes, doesn't it," says Miss Blount, with such unbounded audacity, and with such a charming laugh as instantly scatters all clouds. "You must know I adore cattle, especially Tasmanian cattle." As a mere matter of fact she had brought out this book by mistake, thinking it was one of George Eliot's, because of its cover, and had not opened it until now. "Come and sit here beside me," she says, sweetly, bent on making up for her former ungraciousness, "I have been so dull all the morning, and you wouldn't come and talk to me. So unfeeling of you."
"Much you care whether I come to talk to you or not," says Mr. Gower, with a last foolish attempt at temper. This foolish attempt makes Miss Blount at once aware that the day is her own.
"You may sit on the edge of my gown," she says, generously—she herself is sitting on a garden-chair made for one that carefully preserves her from all damp arising from the damp, wintry grass; "on the very edge, please. Yes, just there," shaking out her skirts; "I can't bear people close to me, it gives me a creepy-creepy feel. Do you know it?"