“No,” he answered as coolly as before. “Why should I?”
Then he gave her a long look from head to foot The dress was a poor enough velveteen and had a cast-off air, but it clung to her figure finely, and its sleeves were picturesque with puffs at the shoulder and slashings of white,—indeed the moonlight made her all black and white; her eyes, which were tawny brown by day, were black as velvet now under the straight lines of her brows, and her face was pure dead fairness itself.
When, his look ended, his eyes met hers, she drew back with an impatient movement. .
“Ye look as if—as if ye thought I didn't get it honest,” she exclaimed petulantly, “but I did.”
That drew his glance toward her dress again, for of course she referred to that, and he could not help asking her a point-blank question.
“Where did you get it?” he said.
There was a slow flippancy about the manner of her reply which annoyed him by its variance with her beauty—but the beauty! How the moonlight and the black and white brought it out as she leaned against the rock, looking at him from under her lashes!
“Are ye goin' to tell the folks up at the house?” she demanded. “They don't know nothin' and I don't want 'em to know.”
He shrugged his shoulder negatively.
She laughed with a hint of cool slyness and triumph.