III
He had her engaged in such a glimpse—a little fearfully suspicious that there were walls about her—on a day when they were hunting together. Mrs. Espart changed her earlier intention of returning to town in the Autumn after Rollo and his mother had left. To encourage her position in the country-side formed part of her own share of the plans for the young people that were to crystallise when the return was made to Burdon Old Manor, and she began to centre Abbey Royal in the social round of the neighbourhood. Her daughter's betrothal to Lord Burdon, when it was done and announced, should thus, as she schemed, lose nothing that was possible to the stir it would make. She was able to use the local Hunt as a prominent part of these intentions, did not ride herself, but horsed Dora well, subscribed handsomely and was gladly taken up by the Master in her suggestion of a bi-monthly meet at the Abbey.
Thus it was after hounds that Percival and Dora were given best chance to meet. The Rough 'Uns' idea of mounting Percival for the field proved successful to them as happy to him; Dora, in pursuance of her mother's plans, had encouragement—and wanted none—rarely to miss a meet. Hounds had run far on that day when she was caught by Percival engaged in one of those transient glimpses of her state that sometimes in these days came to puzzle her. He threw her into it, and that at a moment most unlikely, for circumstances had it that she was uncomfortable and out of temper. A bold fox carried the few who could follow him—they two among them—to a point fifteen miles from the Abbey before hounds ran into him. It was late afternoon, rain falling, when Percival and Dora started to hack the long stretch home, and they were little advanced on the road, and she feeling the wet, when she pronounced her feelings by telling him petulantly: "You should not have made me come on. I would have turned back long ago."
But it had been a rare run, and he was beneath the vigour of it. "Come, it was a great run," he said. "It was worth it, Dora."
"Nothing is worth getting wet like this. You know how I hate getting wet."
She was much wetter, and would give him no words, before a new trial necessitated that she should speak again. Her saddle was slipping, she said, and when he alighted and found the girths had loosened and then that she must get down: "No, I'll try it a little farther," she told him very vexedly. "We're nearly there now. To move is hateful. The wet is touching me right through."
She gave him no answer to his "I'm awfully sorry, Dora;" but presently said: "It's no good, I must get down, I suppose."
He looked up at her as he stood to help her from the saddle.
"You're angry, Dora?"
"Well, of course I am angry."