"I am very much obliged to you," she began, and then paused a second.A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place.She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it.She knew what custom demanded.
Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face.She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt.
"I am very much obliged, keeper," she said."You have given me a great deal of your time.You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you.Ihave never seen anything so beautiful--and so sad.Thank you --thank you." And she put a goldpiece in his palm.
His fingers closed over it quietly.Why it was to her great relief she did not know--because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd.The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee.He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness.
"Thank you, miss," he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner.
He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting jacket.Suddenly he stopped, as if with abrupt resolve.
He handed the coin back without any change of his glum look.
"Hang it all," he said, "I can't take this, you know.I suppose I ought to have told you.It would have been less awkward for us both.I am that unfortunate beggar, Mount Dunstan, myself."A pause was inevitable.It was a rather long one.After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused.
"Yes," she said."You ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan."He slightly shrugged his big shoulders.
"Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron.You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face.Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted Earl himself? There is no cause for embarrassment.""I am not embarrassed," said Bettina.
"That is what I like," gruffly.
"I am pleased," in her mellowest velvet voice, "that you like it."Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze.Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned.
"I beg pardon," he said."You are quite right.It had a deucedly patronising sound."As he stood before her Betty was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique.His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine heavy brows, his features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut, his build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long.He would have wielded a battle-axe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them.Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail.He did not look ill in his corduroys and gaiters.
"I am a self-absorbed beggar," he went on."I had been slouching about the place, almost driven mad by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on.If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign.""I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth," said Miss Vanderpoel"No, I suppose you wouldn't.But I should not have cared."He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up.A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder, or brow, or dense, lifted hair.He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of bluebells under water.They had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low:
"Oh, if it were mine! If it were mine!"