And as I walked backwards and forwards on the cliff, thinking and thinking how I should get away, for go away I must, suddenly the white veil that I had before seen fluttering from the summit, now fluttered over the bushes that edged the beach to my right. I heard the rapid tread of a galloping horse on the sandy road behind the bushes, and in the next moment the rider came round the corner upon a handsome black horse, with an enormous yellow mastiff galloping by his side with an almost equal length of stride. The instant the lady saw me, with a quick firm hand she swerved the well-trained horse to one side, but the dog came bounding to me with evidently hostile intentions. As I was ready for him the moment he sprang at me, I clutched him by the throat and one fore-leg, and hurled him to the ground.
"Leo! Leo!" cried Hermine, urging on her horse with whip and rein. "Here, Leo! Down, Sir!"
But Leo had prudently decided to beat a retreat after the failure of his attack. It seemed that in my haste I had handled him rather roughly, for he limped slowly towards his mistress, whining and holding up his right fore-paw.
"Served you right," said she, bending down to pat him. "How could you be so stupid as to attack that gentleman? Don't you know he can conquer lions?"
She said this in a tone through which there evidently enough pierced a certain scorn, and a trace of contempt, or vexation, or pride, or all together, lay upon her beautiful lips, as she now looked at me sharply with her large clear blue eyes, as I bowed in salutation, and said:
"You need not be surprised, sir: the dog has been trained to protect his mistress. I do not know for what he can have taken you."
These unfriendly words were also spoken in a very far from kindly tone, and I am not sure that an elegant young gentleman who should be thus treated by a beautiful girl would in all cases preserve the repose of manner that marks his caste.
But I only saw in the fair Amazon who behaved so haughtily, the pretty blue-eyed girl of nine or ten years before, when we used to tease each other; so I felt in nowise wounded by her behavior, and I fear that I very calmly remarked that at the worst the dog could only have taken me for a workman, and that I hardly supposed he had been trained to attack a class of persons as useful as they were numerous.
At this answer, which was probably not of the nature she expected, she looked at me with an embarrassed indignant glance, and said, with more temper than logic:
"I do not know why you should be taken for anything else, since you are always occupied with such useful and important matters that of course you cannot care about your external appearance, as do we small every-day people. The last time I had this pleasure, you looked, if I remember right, like a chimney-sweeper; and now--for the sake of contrast probably--you present yourself in the garb of a miller."