“Who is that fella, Shenstone?”
“What fellow?”
“He with the vewy peculya head gear? Indian affair—topee, I bewieve they call it.”
“Where?” asks Shenstone, starting and staring to all sides.
“Yondaw! Appwoaching from the diwection of the rivaw. Looks a fwesh awival. I take it, he must have come by bawt! Knaw him?”
George Shenstone, strong man though he be, visibly trembles. Were Gwen Wynn at that moment to face about, and aim one of her arrows at his breast, it would not bring more pallor upon his cheeks, nor pain to his heart. For he wearing the “peculya head gear” is the man he most fears, and whom he had hoped not to see this day.
So much is he affected, he does not answer the question put to him; nor indeed has he opportunity, as just then Miss Wynn, sighting the topee too, suddenly turning, says to him:—
“George! be good enough to take charge of these things.” She holds her bow with an arrow she had been affixing to the string. “Yonder’s a gentleman just arrived; who you know is a stranger. Aunt will expect me to receive him. I’ll be back soon as I’ve discharged my duty.”
Delivering the bow and unspent shaft, she glides off without further speech or ceremony.
He stands looking after; in his eyes anything but a pleased expression. Indeed, sullen, almost angry, as watching her every movement, he notes the manner of her reception—greeting the new comer with a warmth and cordiality he, Shenstone, thinks uncalled for, however much stranger the man may be. Little irksome to her seems the discharge of that so-called duty; but so exasperating to the baronet’s son, he feels like crushing the bow stick between his fingers, or snapping it in twain across his knee!