“Oh, indeed! And who is he, may I ask?”
“’Tis Dunlone—Lord Dunlone. I have met him. We were in the way of being friends, in fact.”
He thought to himself: “The fellow goes townwards from his Cornish place. ’Tis in sort with his cursed parsimony to stage it like a provident cit.”
“I will excuse you, if you wish to go speak with him,” said Miss Angela.
“Not in the least. I should poorly requite myself for the loss of your society.”
She laughed, with a faint insolence of inflection. Only one reason, it seemed to her, could be for his refusing to act upon the acquaintanceship he claimed—that he feared to put it to the test. Was it possible he was the nobleman’s valet? she mused, recalling that other case.
He sat on, unwitting of her meditations; but he felt a degree of relief, nevertheless, when the guard of the “Regulator”—a confident, red-faced young fellow, in a bottle-green coat and with a sprig of mistletoe in his hat—sounded his horn, disposed his reluctant passengers, swung himself up over the hind-boot, chucked the rosy young woman, to the gazer’s high approval, under the chin, and gave the signal to start; and it was without regret that he saw that straining vehicle draw away with a rumbling of wheels, and the unwelcome vision pass from his ken. For he had no mind to recall a certain phase of his life, from which he could have sworn, years of reformation bridged him.
By two o’clock they were on their way again, and, as the dusk gathered, so did their gloom and reserve seem to deepen. Indeed, the horseman felt it a positive relief when dark shut in upon them still urging onwards, for so the perils of the road were his sufficient excuse for keeping himself apart and without the influence of that depressing atmosphere.
Driving on desperately, in a struggling flurry to escape being benighted on some impassable waste, they struck the track by and by across Hounslow Heath, and put on what additional speed they durst over that open and historic ground.
A crimson spot of light that, upon their first issuing on to the flats, had seemed the low-down radiance of some far cottage-window, grew in lustre as they advanced, until it flared before them, a leaping flame. Thereupon they slackened speed somewhat, moving with caution; and the horseman dropped a hand towards his holster.