“Well,” she consented, with the air of one conferring a favor, “you may take it when we’ve finished.”
Lisle wondered what had prompted him to make the offer. The way she had addressed him was not ingratiating, but he delighted in examining any fine mechanism and he had never handled such a beautifully made weapon.
They plodded on side by side through the heather, which was long and matted, and presently, seeing that she was breathless, he stopped on the crest of a higher rise and once more looked about with keen appreciation.
In front of him the crimson and purple heath was rent and fissured, and in the deep gaps washed out by heavy rains the peat gleamed a warm chocolate-brown. Elsewhere, patches of moss shone with an emerald brightness, and there were outcrops of rock tinted lustrous gray and silver with lichens. Below, near the foot of the moor, ran a straight dark line of firs, the one coldly-somber streak in the scene; but beyond it the rolling, sunlit plain ran back, fading through ever varying and softening colors to the hazy blue heights of Scotland.
Lisle’s companion noticed his intent expression.
“It is rather fine up here,” she conceded. “I sometimes feel it’s almost a pity one couldn’t live among the heather. Certain things would be easier on these high levels.”
“Yes?” interrogated Lisle, slightly puzzled and astonished.
“You’re obviously from the woods,” she smiled. “If you had spent a few years among my friends, you would understand. I was referring to the cultivation of ideas and manners which seem to be considered out of date now.”
Lisle made no reply to this, but he glanced too directly at a red stain on her hand.
“Blood,” she explained. “I had a bet with Alan that I’d get a brace more than Flo; that’s why I went after a cripple running in the ling. It wasn’t dead when I picked it up—rather horrid, wasn’t it?”