herself, and smiling, her eyes wandering all the time in
Dalzell's neighbourhood, without actually touching him--a tall,
deep-bosomed, dark-eyed, dignified as well as beautiful young woman,
knowing herself to be such, and unspoiled by the knowledge. She wore
her crown with the air of feeling herself entitled to it; but it was an
unconscious air, without a trace of petty vanity behind it. Everything
about her was large and generous and incorruptibly wholesome, even her
undoubted high temper. And this was her charm to every man who knew her
--not less than her lovely face.

Guthrie Carey--and who shall blame him?--basked in his good luck. But
every now and then he looked up and met the glower of Claud Dalzell
with a steely eye. These two men, each so fine of his kind, met with
the sentiments of rival stags in the mating season; the impulse to
fight 'on sight' and assure the non-survival of the unfittest came just
as naturally to them as to the less civilised animals. Each recognised
in the other not merely a personal rival, but an opposing type.

It amused Deborah, who grasped the situation as surely as they did, to
note the bristling antipathy behind the careful politeness of their
mutual regard. If it did not bristle under her immediate eye, it
crawled.

"Look out for the articles of virtue," Claud had warned her earlier in
the evening. "That big sailor of yours is rather like a bull in a china
shop; he nearly had the carved table over just now. He doesn't know
just how to judge distance in relation to his bulk. I'd like to know
his fighting weight. When he plants his hoof you can feel the floor
shake."