Windyridge

Excerpt: ... the day was spent, and our energy, though not our spirits, had flagged considerably. We were sitting on the edge of the moor, a mile or so away from home, and the flush of evening spread over the valley and the distant hills, turning the landscape into mystery. The lamp of the setting sun was flickering out in the west, but the handmaidens of the night had lit their tiny torches here and there, and they shone faintly behind the veil of twilight, giving promise of greater radiance when the time should come for them to go forth to meet the crescent bride who tarried in her coming. I was gazing on it dreamily, and breathing out peace and goodwill towards men when Rose dropped her bomb, and shattered my complacency. "What makes you call me the Cynic?" He turned his eyes upon me and awaited my answer with evident curiosity. I looked at him in my turn. He had been bareheaded all day, for he had left his hat at the Hall, and he was now leaning back against a rock, his hands clasped behind his head, and the mischievous look I have so often noticed sparkling in his eyes. He really is rather a fine man, and he has certainly a good strong face. I replied, calmly enough to outward seeming: "Because it has seemed to me an apt description." "I hope not," he replied. "Cynicism is the small change of shallow minds. All the same, it is interesting to be criticised. I did not know when I offered to analyse your character that I was being subjected to the same test." "Indeed you were not," I protested; "it was an appellation that came to me spontaneously whilst you were discoursing so luminously on woman a few months ago, and it is not to be taken seriously. It was wicked of Rose to tell you." Rose laughed and put an arm around me. "Never mind, old girl," she said, "I'm going back to-morrow, so you must forgive me." "I'm afraid you have not distinguished with sufficient care, Miss Holden, between satire and cynicism. I daresay there is a strain of satire in my...