"I like working," I answered. "What would you have me do? Shack about with my hands in my pockets all day?"
"I don't know," she said, hotly. "But when I think of that idle, lazy young Francis dawdling his life away, doing nothing except ape a man about town, and then think of you working hard every day, and remember who you are, it makes me feel angry. Do you know, I longed just now to push him out of his saddle. It wouldn't take much, I don't think."
I laughed outright, but Lady Olive remained serious enough.
"Well, perhaps you'll be pleased to hear that I am going to give up working—here, at any rate," I said. "Of course I can't stop now."
She looked steadily between her horse's ears, growing a shade paler, and I leaned against the stump of an oak-tree wondering how a riding-habit could have been made to fit so well, and admiring her dainty little figure.
"When are you going?" she asked, suddenly.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"As soon as Sir Francis will let me. I have 'given warning.'"
She looked down at me, and spoke a little hurriedly, but with a frank, sincere look in her flushed face.
"Mr. Arbuthnot—I suppose I must call you Mr. Arbuthnot—I think yours is the saddest story I have ever heard. I want you to let me tell you that I feel for you, as much as any one possibly could do, and I think you are behaving splendidly, just as I would have my own brother behave if he were in the same position."