Because, as he turned he came face to face with a vision, the last one would have expected to see in an English park at early day. A girl in a Burmese coat, red as poppies, with gold-embroidered hem a foot deep. Her dress was white. Her eyes were dark, her face palely bright, and behind her dark head a golden-green Japanese umbrella made a great ridged halo.
"I beg your pardon," said Edward again, and understood that it was because he was, after all, trespassing.
"I should think you did," said the vision, crossly. "What on earth do you mean by it? How did you get in?"
Edward, standing a little awkwardly with the aeroplane in his hands, looked toward the wall.
"I came over after this," he said. "I'm very sorry. I was flying the thing and it stuck in the tree. If you'll tell me the way to the lodge, I'll—I hope I didn't scare you."
"I couldn't think what it was," she answered, a little less crossly. "I saw the tree tossing about as if—as if it had gone mad."
"And you thought of dryads and hastened to the spot. And it was only an idiot and his aeroplane. I say—I am sorry—"
"You can't help not being a dryad," she said, and now she smiled, and her smile transformed her face as sunlight does a landscape. "What I really thought you were was a tramp. Only tramps never climb trees. I couldn't think how you got in here, though. Tramps never climb walls. They get in sometimes through the oak fence beyond the plantations."
"It was very intrepid of you to face a tramp," he said.