He had never met with anything like it, she had been as calm and
self-possessed as a woman of forty; and yet her attitude as she leant
forward in the saddle, her directness of speech, all her movements, had
the _abandon_ of an unconscious child; indeed, the absence of
self-consciousness, her absolute freedom from anything like shyness,
combined with a dignity, a touch of hauteur and pride, struck him as
extraordinary, almost weird.

Stafford was not one of your susceptible young men; in fact, there was
a touch of coldness, of indifference to the other sex which often
troubled his women-friends; and he was rather surprised at himself for
the interest which the girl had aroused in him. He wondered if he
should meet her again, and was conscious of a strong, almost a very
strong, desire to do so which, he admitted to himself, was strange: for
he did not at that moment remember any girl whom, at his first meeting
with her, he had hankered to see again.

He got to the top of the hill at last and began to drop down; there was
nothing but a wandering sheep-path here and there, and the mountain was
by no means as easy to descend as the classic Avernus; so that when he
got to the bottom and came in sight of the little inn nestling in a
crook of the valley he was both tired and hungry. Howard, beautiful in
evening-dress, came sauntering to the door with his long white hands in
his pocket and a plaintive reproach on his Vandyke face.