“Mallard,” Lisle commented. “Young birds—even where we seldom disturb them, they’re shy.”
She slipped away through the alders and he noticed how little noise she made, though the lower branches here and there brushed against her gliding form. She was wonderfully light and graceful in her movements. As she came out into the open there was a startled quack or two from the birds. Lisle expected to see them rise from the water, but she called softly and, to his vast astonishment, they ceased paddling away from her. She called again and they turned and swam cautiously toward her, and when she took a handful of something from a pocket and flung it upon the surface of the stream, three or four heads were stretched forward to seize the morsels.
While the birds drew nearer Lisle looked on admiring. She had roused his interest when he had first seen her in her rich evening dress, but now he thought she made a far more striking picture, and her sympathy with the timid wild creatures which evidently knew and trusted her awakened something responsive in him. Half the pool now glimmered in the rosy light, with here and there an alder branch reflected upon its mirror-like surface, and Millicent stood on a strip of gravel with her figure clearly outlined against it. Dressed in closely-fitting, soft-colored tweed, tall and finely symmetrical, she harmonized with rock and flood wonderfully well. Lisle had occasionally seen a bush rancher’s daughter, armed with gun or fishing-rod, look very much at home in similar surroundings; but this English lady, of culture and station, reared in civilized luxury, appeared equally in her right place.
He afterward recollected each adjunct of the scene—the stillness, the pale gleam of the water, and the aromatic smell of fallen leaves, but the alluring, central figure formed the sharpest memory. By and by she clapped her hands, the ducks rose and flew away up-stream with necks stretched out, and she came back toward him, laughing softly.
“Sometimes they will come almost up to my feet; but I’m afraid it’s hardly fair to inspire them with an undue confidence in human nature. It might cost them dear.”
“You’re wonderful!” Lisle exclaimed, expressing what he felt, for she seemed to him endowed with every gracious quality.
“Oh,” she smiled, “there’s nothing really remarkable in what I showed you. I happened to find the nest and by slow degrees disarmed the mother bird’s suspicions; mallard have been domesticated, you know, though they’re often hard to get very near. But we may as well turn back; it’s now too late to see an otter. I’m inclined to think they’re the shyest of all the British wild creatures.”
They moved away down-stream side by side, and some time later she left him where a stile-path crossed a meadow.
“Come and see my drawings whenever you like,” she said on parting.
Lisle determined to go as soon as possible. Quite apart from the drawings, the idea of going had its attractions for him, and he walked homeward determined that this girl should never marry Clarence Gladwyne. It was unthinkable—that was the only word for it.