"This—this—person is with them, and they seem to count him as a man," answered Jemima, with a gesture of intense scorn.
Mrs. Harrington here was seen to draw up her horse in the shade of a huge chestnut, and playfully beckon the widower with her whip.
"Jemima, I must. It would be underbred," cried the desperate man, riding away to the enemy.
Jemima sat upon her horse, petrified with amazement. Her father looked anxiously back when he reached the widow, with sad forebodings of the tempest that would follow, but there the spinster sat at the cross roads like an equestrian statue.
"Come, come," said the widow, touching him playfully with her whip. "Elsie is getting impatient. Now for a race."
Her spirited horse dashed forward at a run. The ponderous steed of the widower thundered after, making the forest reverberate with the heavy fall of his hoofs.
Mr. Hawkins fell into a dainty amble, and away the whole party swept into the green shadows of the woods.
Jemima looked right and she looked left. Should she ride on and leave her pa in the hands of that designing creature? Perish the thought, better anything than that! She touched her horse. It turned sharply, and swept down the highway like a greyhound. She struck him on the flank, then the tiny lash of her whip quivered about his ears till he dashed on, flinging back dust and stones with his hoofs.
The party was riding fast. Mr. Hawkins by Elsie, Mr. Rhodes close to the widow—so close, that somehow her right hand, whip and all, had got entangled with his. They were on a curve of the road, around which Jemima came sweeping like a torrent. With a single bound her horse rushed in between them, leaving the widow's gauntlet glove in the grasp of that frightened man, and the cornelian-headed whip deep in the mud of the highway.
Not a word was spoken. The widower sank abjectly down in his saddle, and with his apprehensive eyes turned sideways on the spinster, surreptitiously thrust the stray glove into the depths of his pocket. The widow, convulsed with mingled laughter and rage, gave no doubt of genuine color now, for her face was crimson. Thus, like two prisoners under military guard, they moved on, with Jemima riding in grim vigilance between them.