can (which is very little, by-the-bye) to hold my tongue.”
She handed me my cup of tea, laughing gaily. Her light flow of talk, and her lively familiarity of manner with a total stranger, were accompanied by an unaffected naturalness and an easy inborn confidence in herself and her position, which would have secured her the respect of the most audacious man breathing. While it was impossible to be formal and reserved in her company, it was more than impossible to take the faintest vestige of a
you.”
She turned, and pointed back to a place at the junction of the road to London and the road to Hampstead, where there was a gap in the hedge.
“I heard you coming,” she said, “and hid there to see what sort of man you were, before I risked speaking. I doubted and feared about it till you passed;