That will never do."
But Miltoun removed her hand gently, and laid it back on the dust rug,
nor did he answer, or show other sign of having heard.
And Lady Casterley, deeply wounded, pressed her faded lips together, and
said sharply:
"Slower, please, Frith!"
CHAPTER V
It was to Barbara that Miltoun unfolded, if but little, the trouble of
his spirit, lying that same afternoon under a ragged tamarisk hedge with
the tide far out. He could never have done this if there had not been
between them the accidental revelation of that night at Monkland; nor
even then perhaps had he not felt in this young sister of his the warmth
of life for which he was yearning. In such a matter as love Barbara was
the elder of these two. For, besides the motherly knowledge of the heart
peculiar to most women, she had the inherent woman-of-the-worldliness to
be expected of a daughter of Lord and Lady Valleys. If she herself were
in doubt as to the state of her affections, it was not as with Miltoun,
on the score of the senses and the heart, but on the score of her spirit
and curiosity, which Courtier had awakened and caused to flap their
wings a little. She worried over Miltoun's forlorn case; it hurt her
too to think of Mrs. Noel eating her heart out in that lonely cottage.
A sister so--good and earnest as Agatha had ever inclined Barbara to a
rebellious view of morals, and disinclined her altogether to religion.
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