Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/215

 "I don't know much about sheep," he admitted.

"Do you know—" to Kate, with all her social manner—"you are deliciously unique?"

Kate, who detected the sneer, but had no social manner to meet it, asked brusquely:

"In what way?"

"You're so—" she hesitated for a word and seemed to search her vocabulary for the right one—" so strong—minded."

Kate's eyes were sparkling.

"If by that you mean intelligent, I thank you for the compliment, and I'm sorry that I can't—" She checked herself, but the inference was clear that she intended to add—"return it."

Miss Rathburn's fair skin became a deeper pink than even a pink-lined parasol warranted, while Kate addressed herself to Disston exclusively.

Disston had listened in dismay. Whatever was the matter? In truth, it must be, he told himself, that women were natural enemies. He never had seen this feline streak in Beth to recognize it, and he had felt instinctively that, on Kate's side, from the first glance she had not liked her visitor.

To Beth Rathburn, it was ridiculous that Disston should take seriously this girl who, at the moment, was considerably less presentable than any one of their own servants—that he should treat her with all the deference he showed to any woman of his acquaintance, as if she were of his own class exactly! And a worse offense was his obviously keen interest in her. It was a new sensation for the southern girl to be ignored, or at least omitted from the conversation, and each second her resentment grew, though the underlying cause was that she felt herself overshadowed by Kate's stronger personality.