For Archie continued to drink
her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a
mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. In
the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale
florets of primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave, and the
flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much
discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze - saw it,
perhaps, with the dainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her
ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her
unsteady breath. Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she
sought in a dozen ways to give herself a countenance. She used her
handkerchief - it was a really fine one - then she desisted in a panic:
"He would only think I was too warm." She took to reading in the
metrical psalms, and then remembered it was sermon-time. Last she put a
"sugar-bool" in her mouth, and the next moment repented of the step. It
was such a homely-like thing! Mr.
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