may have been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was
unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden. Indeed, the sensation
was so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was
merely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a
little sister of a little Jove, and to neglect closing prices
altogether.

The numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into
greater relief by a marked exception. Women seem to have eyes in
their ribbons for such matters as these. Bathsheba, without looking
within a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the
flock.

It perplexed her first. If there had been a respectable minority on
either side, the case would have been most natural. If nobody had
regarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferently--such
cases had occurred. If everybody, this man included, she would have
taken it as a matter of course--people had done so before. But the
smallness of the exception made the mystery.

She soon knew thus much of the recusant's appearance. He was a
gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features,
the prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like
richness of tone. He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour.
One characteristic pre-eminently marked him--dignity.

Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age
at which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of
a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman's does likewise.
Thirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation--he might have