'I was doing nothing in the woods, sir, but finding my way home.'
'How came he to be there? Did he speak to you?'
'Yes, sir, he spoke to me.'
'What did he say?' said Mr. Falkirk, looking very gravely intent.
'Before we go any further, Mr. Falkirk,' said the girl, steadily, though she coloured a good deal, 'is it to be your pleasure in future to know every word that may be said to me? Because in that case, it will be needful to engage a reporter. You must see, sir, that I should never be equal to it.'
'My dear,' said Mr. Falkirk slowly, 'we are embarked on a search after fortune;—which always embraced on my part an earnest purpose to avoid misfortune.'
'You sit there,' she went on, scarce heeding him, 'and ask me "where I was" and "where I was going" and "what I said"—as if I would forget myself among strange people in this strange place!—And then you take for granted that I would be rude to one person whom I do know, just because he had vexed me! I did ask him in, and he wouldn't come. I am unpractised—wild, maybe—but am I so unwomanly, Mr. Falkirk? Do you think I am?' It was almost pitiful, the way the young eyes scanned his face. If Mr. Falkirk had not been a guardian! But he was steel.
Yet even steel will give forth flashes, and one of those flashes came from under Mr. Falkirk's brows now. His answer was very quiet.
'My dear, I think you no more unwomanly than I think a rose unlovely—but the rose has thorns which sometimes prick the hands that would train it out of harm's way. And it might occur even to your inexperience that when a gentleman who does not know you presumes to address you, he can have nothing to say which it would not be on several accounts proper for me to hear.'
Again the colour bloomed up.