"Oh, you think I'm giving him away?" he said. "My dear Miss Falconer,
everybody knows him. Every ball-room every tennis-court, is strewed
with his wrecks. And all the time he doesn't know it; but goes his way
crowned with a modesty which is the marvel and the wonder of this most
marvellous of ages."
"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked,
as listlessly as before.
But behind her lowered lids her eyes were shining with a singular
brightness.
Howard turned to her delightedly.
"My dear Miss Falconer, if you were a man I should ask to shake hands
with you. It so exactly describes him. That's just what he is. As
handsome as the dew--I beg your pardon!--as frank as a boy, as gentle
as a woman, as staunch, as a bull-dog, as brave--he would have stopped
a drayman's team just as readily as yours last night--and as
invulnerable as that marble statue."
He pointed to a statue of Adonis which stood whitely on the edge of the
lawn, and she raised her eyes and looked at it dreamily.
"I could break that thing if I had a big hammer," she said.
"I daresay," he said.
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