by its own weight it suddenly brought Lewis back to the present and
confusion. He colored. His lips were opening in apology when the lady
spoke.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

Lewis gave her a grateful look.

"I've been playing about the old place," he said, smiling. "Not alone.
Natalie, Shenton, and I. We've been racing through the pineapple-patch,
lying on our backs under an orange-tree, visiting the stables, and--and
Manoel's little house, hiding in the bramble-patch, and peeking over the
priest's wall." Lewis waved his hand at the scene that made his words so
incongruous. "Sounds to you like rank nonsense, I suppose."

The lady shook her head.

"No," she said--"no, it doesn't sound like nonsense."

Then he asked her about Natalie. She told him many little things. At the
end she said:

"I feel that I've told you nothing. Natalie is one of those persons that
we generally call a 'queer girl' because we haven't the intelligence or
the expression to define them. Our local wit said that she was a girl
whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered
herself too good for any man. That was unjust, but it sounded true
because sooner or later all the eligibles lined up before Natalie--and
in vain." The lady frowned. "But she wasn't selfish or hard. She used to
let them hang on till they just dropped off. She was one of those women