'Of whom are you speaking, pray?'
'As if you didn't know! Of Mr. Hammond.'
'And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated
him badly?'
'Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French
books say. As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time,
and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the
fir-copse that day.'
'You Were listening' cried Lesbia indignantly.
'I was not listening! I was passing by. And if people choose to carry on
their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard. I
heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight
the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his
sake. But you have a heart of stone. You and grandmother both have
hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you
were little, and put a stone in its place.'
'Really,' said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit
her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, 'I think you
ought to be very grateful to me--and grandmother--for refusing Mr.
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