pretty coquette cast down her eyes in affected humility and sorrow.
Whereupon immediately Sholto felt his resentment begin to melt like
snow off a dike top when the sun of April is shining.

But neither of them uttered another word till they reached the
drawbridge which crossed the nether moat and conducted to the noble
gateway of Thrieve. Then, at the foot of the stairway to the hall,
Sholto, having swung the little maid from her pony, after a moment of
sullen hesitation went across to assist Mistress Maud Lindesay out of
her saddle.

As he lifted the girl down his heart thundered tumultuously in his
breast, for he had never so touched her before. Her lashes rested
modestly on her cheek--long, black, and upcurled a little at the ends.
As her foot touched the ground, she raised them a moment, and looked
at him with one swift flash of violet eyes made darker by the
seclusion from which she had released them. Then in another moment she
had dropped them again, detaching them from his with a mighty
affectation of confusion.

"Please, Sholto, I am sorry. I did not mean it." She spoke like a
child that is sorry for a fault and is fearful of being chidden.

And even though knowing full well by bitter experience all her
naughtiness and hypocrisy, Sholto, gulping his heart well down into
his throat, could not do otherwise than forgive a thing so pretty and
so full of the innocent artifices which make mown hay of the hearts of
men.

With a touch of his lips upon the hand of Margaret the Maid in token