"To a damaging estimate of my character? Thank you very much!"
"I wonder"--he said, in another tone--"what sort of estimate you have of my character--false, or true?"
"Well, there have been a great many surprises!" said Diana, raising her eyebrows.
"In the matter of my character?"
"Not altogether."
"My surroundings? You mean I talked Radicalism--or, as you would call it, Socialism--to you at Portofino, and here you find me in the character of a sporting Squire?"
"I hear"--she said, deliberately looking about her--"that this is the finest shoot in the county."
"It is. There is no denying it. But, in the first place, it's my mother's shoot, not mine--the estate is hers, not mine--and she wishes old customs to be kept up. In the next--well, of course, the truth is that I like it abominably!"
He had thrust his cap into his pocket, and was walking bareheaded. In the glow of the evening air his strong manhood seemed to gain an added force and vitality. He moved beside her, magnified and haloed, as it were, by the dusk and the sunset. Yet his effect upon her was no mere physical effect of good looks and a fine stature. It was rather the effect of a personality which strangely fitted with and evoked her own--of that congruity, indeed, from which all else springs.
She laughed at his confession.