Lynde was longer recovering himself, this time. He stood rooted to the
ground, stupidly watching the retreating gracious form of the girl, who
half turned once and looked back at him. Then she vanished over the
ridge of the hill, as the old gentleman had done. Was she following him?
Was there any connection between those two? Perhaps he was the village
clergyman. Could this be his daughter? What an unconventional costume
for a young lady to promenade in--for she was a lady down to her finger-
nails! And what an odd salutation!

"The Queen of Sheba!" he repeated wonderingly. "What could she mean by
that? She took me for some country bumpkin, with this confounded saddle,
and was laughing at me. I never saw a girl at once so--so audacious and
modest, or so lovely. I didn't know there was anything on earth so
lovely as that girl."

He had caught only an instantaneous glimpse of her face, but he had seen
it with strange distinctness, as one sees an object by a flash of
lightning; and he still saw it, as one seems still to see the object in
the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even
an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek
near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow
to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it
one knows not what of piquancy.

"Evidently she lives in the town or in the neighborhood. Shall I meet
her again, I wonder? I will stay here a week or a month if--What
nonsense! I must have distinguished myself, staring at her like a gawk.
When she said she was the Queen of Sheba, I ought instantly to have
replied--what in the deuce is it I ought to have replied? How can a man
be witty with a ton of sole-leather pressing on his spine!"