"Nice girl, that Miss Scott!" Laurence remarked, after a long pause; "not extraordinary pretty, but there's something awfully taking about her. Did you see her hair? Of course you didn't. But it was something worth seeing—a mass of golden tresses. I never saw anything like it. And her smile! I danced five times with her—all waltzes; but I suppose that was not wrong, eh? She's clever, and no mistake, for a girl her age. I don't suppose she's more than nineteen."
"Born in 1867, that is twenty-five years old now," mumbled Mr. Carrington half aloud.
"Twenty-five, Dad! How on earth do you know her age?" exclaimed the young man in tones of surprise.
"What—what? Did I speak? Oh, nothing. I was just then rather deep in my thoughts."
"'Pon my word," said Laurence, "I believe you're getting into your second dotage, Daddy."
The old gentleman did not reply. He seemed too occupied with his own meditations to take any notice of his son's further remarks either upon the festivities at the Marquis's house or the young lady who had attracted him to no small degree, and whose praises he continued to sing throughout the first part of the eight miles' drive to Northden.
Those who are acquainted with that part of the North Riding of Yorkshire in which the village mentioned lies will recollect that the road between Northden and the Marquis of Moorland's seat runs for some little distance along the east edge of the extensive moor, from which, at a prehistoric period, some ancestor of the august owner of the neighbouring country took his title. The Carrington carriage was halfway across this stretch of heath—the most deserted part of the route—when the coachman suddenly became aware of the fact that some other vehicle or person was closely following in his rear. Turning round in his seat, he glared into the darkness behind, and fancied that he discerned the figure of a man on horseback riding immediately behind the carriage.
He thought nothing of this, deciding that the fellow-traveller was either a mounted postman riding home, or some country doctor who had been called out at a late hour to visit a patient in some distant part of his large district of practice.
For some reason or other, however, the coachman happened to glance back again a minute or two later, when he was astounded beyond measure to see that the supposed man on horseback was a cyclist, and that, with what the coachman set down as "confounded impidence," he was riding alongside the coach, and cautiously peering in through the steam-coated window at the occupants of the carriage!
Now, James Moggin was a servant who had no little respect for the person of his lord and master (though he did occasionally allude to him in conversing with particularly intimate acquaintances as the "ole man"), and this cyclist's action he considered a dastardly outrage upon the privacy of Mr. Carrington and his son. He therefore drew up suddenly, and seizing his whip, intended, in his own words, to give the misdemeanant "a 'elp on 'is way." But though he did not know it, by so doing he gave the inquisitive cyclist the opportunity he needed.