This he seemed to do
mechanically, not as one forecasting danger, not as a spy. In the curve
of his lips, in an occasional droop of his eyelids, there was a
suggestion of humour: less often a quality of the young than of the old.
For even in the late seventeenth century, youth took itself seriously at
times.
Presently, as he stood looking at the sunshine through the open door,
a young girl came into the lane of light, waved her hand, with a little
laugh, to some one in the distance, and stepped inside. At first she did
not see him. Her glances were still cast back the way she had come.
The young man could not follow her glance, nor was he anything curious.
Young as he was, he could enjoy a fine picture. There was a pretty
demureness in the girl's manner, a warm piquancy in the turn of the neck,
and a delicacy in her gestures, which to him, fresh from hard hours in
the woods, was part of some delightful Arcady--though Arcady was more in
his veins than of his knowledge. For the young seigneur of New France
spent far more hours with his gun than with his Latin, and knew his bush-
ranging vassal better than his tutor; and this one was too complete a
type of his order to reverse its record. He did not look to his scanty
lace, or set himself seemingly; he did but stop flicking the scarf held
loose in his fingers, his foot still on the bench.
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