Jardine was amazed and incensed at Lloyd's ready acceptance, and the broker, turning to the telephone, was the first to cry "Hello" to the livery stable.
It seemed a fate, the most mischievous of complications, that Jardine's effort to save his lady-love the ennui of a dull day should presently place her beside the man of all others whom he wished her to avoid—handsomer than ever in correct equestrian costume—"possibly his gear as a ringmaster," Jardine thought, with a sneer—and riding like a centaur. The broker's horse was a stylish, well-bred brute, and his very proximity seemed to stimulate Admiration to sudden bursts of competitive speed. Both mounts were hard to hold, and Lucia had never seemed half so beautiful, so spirited. Her dark-green riding-habit enhanced her fairness. She wore the regulation high stiff silk hat on her fluffy brown hair, with a shimmering white silken veil twisted half about it, and half about her throat. Her high white collar and shirt front in their mannish effect and a dark-red four-in-hand tie were her special pride. Her airy poise on the side-saddle seemed to Lloyd infinite temerity and a great sacrifice to feminine bondage in convention, for he was accustomed to see "lydies" ride cross-saddle, but she appeared to have much confidence, and maintained a secure seat. Erect and fearless she now and again looked over her shoulder to invite Ruth's bright-eyed sympathy from the distance. For Rosabel could not canter in the same class; sleek and gentle and fleet enough, she was ideal for a lady's use, and Jardine jogged on his hired nag beside her. Jardine had jockeyed, as one may say, to throw Lloyd with Ruth Laniston, and himself join the two ahead. But Lloyd had taken his place beside Lucia's rein, and persistently kept it. Frank was soon losing ground. He could not maintain the pace, and Jardine presently to his immeasurable chagrin found the brother and sister beside him while the fleeter steeds carried the couple ahead on and on—out of sight.
For a time neither drew rein; the sandy road, beaten hard by the late storm, was ideal. The foliage of the forest trees all along the vast slopes was freshly washed and resplendent. The illuminated yellow of the maples and hickories might have dispensed with the sun in its wonderful clarity of tone; it seemed to glow with inherent light. The red of the sourwood and the sumach and the scarlet oak contrasted richly. Down in the valleys, glimpsed whenever the road skirted the mountain's verge, one could see that the deciduous trees were still green, but on these lofty levels no foliage showed verdant save the fir and the pine. The wind itself seemed hardly more swift than the racing steeds; the clouds, dazzlingly white above the endless blue ranges, challenged their speed, scudding before the high aërial currents above even the bare domes, the "balds" of the mountains.
Now and then as the riders skirted a precipice they caught sight of a swift torrent, leaping down the mountain side, in cataract after cataract. Once Lloyd checked his horse to mark how the great vine that climbed from among the roots of a giant poplar on the slope below to its topmost branch, was laden with grapes; on a level with the road sat the cub of a bear in their midst, feeding on the fruit, pausing to gaze at them with a quaint ursine stare.
The horses snorted and sprang aside, and he laid his hand on her bridle as they passed along the narrow precipitous way. It was somewhat too narrow, too precipitous for this breakneck speed, and perhaps but for his peculiar insensibility to danger in equine matters he might earlier have checked it.
"We had best go slow along here," he said. "The earth is soft with the rain, and it might cave. Step lightly, my friend," he addressed the animal. But when they came on good rock-ribbed footing he did not mend their pace.
"Yes, we will go slow," she said, "and wait for the others."
"I don't care for them to overtake us," he said. "I have something in mind I want to say to you."
She looked confused, agitated. Her flush rose to the roots of her hair. She turned upon him her beautiful eyes—was it appeal or was it a gentle compassion that looked out at him inscrutably. Then she turned them hastily away.
"Don't say it," she exclaimed. "Don't say it!"