Fuming, driven beyond himself, his head one racked and aching bone, the baronet pushed past the withered hag and started on an exploration of the house. He flung up the stairs, and passed into more than one meagre little bed-chamber. Each was tenantless; as was every room upon the floor below.
“I have been drugged, by God!” he thought to himself; and went out to the rear where the stables were.
Here he found his horse comfortably stalled, and with all his housings yet on him.
He climbed into the saddle. He might have had a full sack upon his shoulders, from the trouble it cost him. As he rode away, he could have thought his head rocking like a toy-tumbler. He had to hold on with a frantic grip, or he would have rolled off into the road and probably snapped his spine like a stick of celery. The flinty track seemed to slide under him as if it were a long ribbon reeling off a drum. And all the time the pain in his head was horrible.
Presently he was sicklily aware of a woman’s figure crossing from a field-path in front of him. Even in his anguish, something that was familiar in its pose struck him.
“Betty!” he murmured thickly; and pulling up his horse with uncalculated abruptness, actually toppled out of the saddle, and fell in a heap to the ground.
She ran to him, uttering a faint cry. The horse had swerved on the moment, and one of its rider’s feet was wedged in a stirrup. She caught the bridle, backed the frightened animal, and so saved its master a deadly mangling.
Then, looping the reins over her arm, she bent above the prostrate man, with shining eyes full of rebuke and pity.
“Oh!” she said—“how could your honour be so foolish?”
He smiled up at her with a lost look of pain.