"Why?"

She turned on me with a look of angry amazement--not undeserved, I must
own, on my part--which showed her dark beauty in the perfection of its
luster and its power. To my eyes she was at the moment irresistibly
charming. I daresay I was blind to the defects in her face. My good
German tutor used to lament that there was too much of my boyhood still
left in me. Honestly admiring her, I let my favorable opinion express
itself a little too plainly. "What a splendid creature you are!" I burst
out. Cristel did her duty to herself and to me; she passed over my little
explosion of nonsense without taking the smallest notice of it.

"Master Gerard," she began--and checked herself. "Please to excuse me,
sir; you have set my head running on old times. What I want to say is:
you were not so inquisitive when you were a young gentleman in short
jackets. Please behave as you used to behave then, and don't say anything
more about our lodger. I hate him because I hate him. There!"

Ignorant as I was of the natures of women, I understood her at last.
Cristel's opinion of the lodger was evidently the exact opposite of the
lodger's opinion of Cristel. When I add that this discovery did decidedly
operate as a relief to my mind, the impression produced on me by the
miller's daughter is stated without exaggeration and without reserve.

"Good-night," she repeated, "for the last time." I held out my hand. "Is
it quite right, sir," she modestly objected, "for such as me to shake
hands with such as you?"

She did it nevertheless; and dropping my hand, cast a farewell look at
the mysterious object of her interest--the new cottage. Her variable