Nobody seemed to want to talk. Something had gone wrong with the lamp inside the carriage, and they were in darkness, except for the faint irradiation of the moon. Mrs. Clinton had driven home earlier, with Sir George and Lady Senhouse and Muriel Clinton, Walter's wife. In the absence of Bobby Trench, the eight of them inside the omnibus were of such family intimacy that there was no necessity for conversation, if private thoughts sufficed, or snatches of slumber. John Spence, the one exception, had no great initiative in conversation at any time, and in the far corner beside Nancy much preferred the silent, ruminative progression through the dark country roads and lanes. Greatly daring, he advanced his large muscular hand under the warm fur billowing down the carriage, and sought for Nancy's. He found it and gave it a squeeze. She returned the squeeze and withdrew her hand. A year before, such a sign of appreciative affection might very well have come from her—or from Joan—instead of from him. Perhaps her ready acceptance of it might mean no more than that her affectionate appreciation was still of the same quality. But the chance of its meaning something more thrilled his big frame, and on it his thoughts fed sweetly in the dark silence.
Virginia was right. He was head over ears in love with Nancy, but he shrank from telling her so. He was years older than she, almost as old as Dick, almost an old bachelor, except that at heart he had kept his simple youthfulness; and his great body, hardened and kept fine by field-sports, was still as responsive to his mind as that of a youth in his glorious twenties. But modesty was a great part of him, and he could not envisage himself as a man likely to gain prizes usually reserved for gallant youth. The fresh, laughing friendliness of the twins, when he had first known them as girls of fifteen, had attracted him delightfully, and he had been surprised to find that the attraction had changed its quality; also, at first, a little incredulous. It was only when he discovered that he thrilled to Nancy's touch and voice, and not to Joan's, that he accepted his fate; and, ever since, he had been tormented with doubts as to whether an avowal of his new feeling would bring him a response, or only destroy the frank confidence with which he still loved to be treated. The poor man sometimes imagined Nancy regarding him in the light of a fun-producing uncle, and felt that it would be sacrilege to her innocence to reveal himself as a lover. If he risked all, he might lose all, and be for ever disgraced in her eyes. He trembled, in his more darksome moods, at the thought. But love was urging him on. The time would soon come when the avuncular character would be more difficult to support than that of a rejected absentee.
Dick pulled up his horses at a gate opening on to a broad grass ride between the trees. A groom got down from behind and opened it.
"We cut off nearly a mile and a half here," Dick said. "But I'm afraid it will be rather soft going after this rain. We'll chance it. There's only one place where we might get stuck."
The horses broke gently into a slow trot, their hoofs and the iron-shod wheels of the heavy carriage making no sound on the thick grass. They went down a long and very easy slope, and then Dick pulled them to a walk through soft ground in the cup of the almost indistinguishable hollow. With a tightening of traces and no more than the stroke of a whip-lash they pulled the omnibus through, leaving sharp ruts behind it, and were once more on springy turf. Just as they were about to quicken into a trot again, Bobby Trench seized Dick's arm. "What's that!" he cried. "Did you hear it?"
"Somebody shouted," said Frank, standing up behind them; and had no sooner spoken when the silence of the woods was sharply broken by a gun-shot.
"Poachers, by Jove!" said Dick. "We shall catch them." He drove quickly on towards the point from which the report had come.
Suddenly there were shouts of men, and another report from a gun; then more shouting, and the cracking of trampled twigs quite near to them.
"The keepers are out. Good boys!" cried Dick, in excitement, reining in his horses.
Frank and Bobby Trench were down and off into the covert. Humphrey, who had been sitting next to the door, had followed them. Dick was for doing the same, but paused irresolute when he had called a groom to take the reins, and swung himself down from his seat. There was a commotion inside the omnibus. The women must be thought of.